In Another Place
by Lady Otori
Summary: Love in other worlds; an anthology of Sasuke, Sakura, and how they find each other no matter who they are. Most recent prompt: Roommates I Didn't Mean To Turn You On AU [SasuSaku]
1. Blade in the Dark

**AN: **A few people on Tumblr requested that I upload my AU prompts in one place for easy rereading. Hope you enjoy! I take suggestions over on my tumblr, which has the same name as here.

* * *

"Sakura-sama, this is Sasuke - he'll be your blade in the dark, your right hand man, your confidante."

The Slug Princess looks to her adopted daughter to gauge her reaction; from the corner of her eye, Sakura notices the way Tsunade frowns at her unhappy expression.

"What's wrong?" Tsunade asks, sounding annoyed. It's rare that people show displeasure in her presence and the sight of it makes her agitated.

"I wanted…" Sakura starts, fingers curling into one another as she looks down at the little boy kneeling in front of her, his shaggy black hair brushing his knees as he sits motionless. "I wanted someone older. Like Itachi, or Izumi."

The adults in the room sigh knowingly, but Sakura watches the way Sasuke's hair tenses along with his slight shoulders. Almost immediately it endears him to her, but she's learned in the months since her new mother picked her up that a princess doesn't go back on her word. So she sits in her still-unfamiliar kimono and watches as he tries to remain the picture of stillness on the luxurious mahogany floor.

"It's important that you're the same age," Tsunade's shadow explains, and Sakura recalls that she is Sasuke's own mother, Mikoto. "Because then you can talk to one another about anything at all."

"Hmm," Sakura muses, unconvinced, and in that moment Sasuke meets her eyes and she sees his are as black as the fur of the newborn kitten in her room. "I guess he'll do," she pronounces, and pretends not to see the visible sigh of relief his mother emits from her position behind Tsunade's throne.

He more than _does_, although it takes Sakura a year and a half to admit it. They're curled up like the kittens they still are, basking in the warmth of the sun when there's a crash and the stout wood of the fence falls in front of her. Three men erupt through the opening and she knows immediately that they have come to kill her, large brutes with the sigil of Oto on their forehead and death in their hearts. Sasuke paints it across their faces, leaping to life with a ferocity that surprises her and then frightens her when he turns around with adult blood staining his childish cheeks.

But he's alive, and she's alive, and then Sakura is crying into his bloodied shoulder while Tsunade pats him on the head and his mother promises tomatoes for dinner.

"Sasuke," she wails, reaching out for him when Mikoto tries to whisk him away. "Let me see to Sasuke."

Both women shrug, and so the young princess cleans her shadow's wounds while he frowns and tries to stay silent when it hurts. And because he's saved her life, Sakura doesn't say anything about the fat tears pooling in the corners of his black, black eyes.

The care becomes something of a routine, one they perform for years and years without incident. Though she's never felt the need to _confide _in Sasuke for anything - for what problems does a fourteen year old princess really have? - Sakura makes liberal use of the Uchiha as her right hand man. Mostly this involves sneaking extra servings of dango and giving her a seat on his shoulders when she wants to watch the festivals but Tsunade forbids it, but occasionally Sakura sends him on serious errands. The kind where he comes back sullen, and surly, and sometimes tinged with blood that is not his own. Such is life for the youngest Senju Princess, and neither of them question it until she sends him out to finish off one Uzumaki Naruto and he freezes like she's doused him in ice.

"What?" she barks, hands on hips that are just beginning to round out. The kimonos sit easily on her now, but there's a little of the rebellious child still inside when her chin juts out and she stands in his way.

"Nothing," Sasuke replies, but she hears the lie.

"Tell me," Sakura commands. And orders don't often work on him, but this time Sasuke's eyes are fire as he retorts,

"Tell _me," _he begins, "why you want me to kill him."

Sasuke has never cared before.

"There are rumours," Sakura hedges, "that some of the elders are setting him up as a contender for my mother's throne."

"Rumours," Sasuke repeats, and he takes a half-step closer to her under the plum tree. Unlike when they were five, or nine, or eleven, he's taller than her now and his shadow falls across her face, blocking her view of his expression.

She stands her ground until he runs a hand through his hair and sighs heavily, the kind of sound she's never heard a servant make in her presence. Heartfelt, heartsick, and Sakura feels a sliver of jealousy for the boy who provoked such emotions in her blade.

"Why don't you try and make an ally of him instead of an enemy?" Sasuke suggests, and she almost acquises based solely on the fact it's the first real advice he's ever given her.

"He wouldn't _be _an enemy," she says, frowning, "because he'd be dead." The princess is that confident in Sasuke's skills. And her shadow knows it, if the way he holds back a smirk is any indication.

"Try it," he prompts, gently, and so she does. And the Uzumaki family fall gladly into line with the Senju, and Naruto becomes one of her very greatest friends, but it's still five years before she discovers that he and Sasuke played together by the river on their rare days of solitude.

The day after she finds out is the day when Tsunade first trots a prospective suitor in front of her small throne. Sakura eyes the man up and down, noticing the way that he's already showing a paunch at twenty-two, and the way he is trying and failing to keep the lecherous twist from his eyes. Still, his father is an important warlord to the east and it's clear that Tsunade is considering a political match, so Sakura cannot dismiss him out of hand.

"What do you think?" she whispers to Sasuke instead, fan in front of her face. Her shadow leans from his position behind her and doesn't say anything, just raises a fine black eyebrow in his own disapproving way.

_No_, Sakura thinks in agreement. She couldn't see herself with this nameless young lord. From the way Tsunade's mouth has turned down at the corners and Mikoto's closed-off expression, the way the room will fall out is clear. The next lord is similar, and the one after that insults Tsunade so fiercely that there's a minor war to distract them all for a few months. Eventually, though, Sakura knows someone will appear with the right attitude and the right credentials and her mother will accept him with open arms.

She doesn't expect it to be Naruto. From the way Sasuke stands as though carved from salt beside her Sakura knows that he did not expect it either. And the discussion proceeds well enough; Naruto looks friendly if not keen (she knows he loves a girl from the Hyuuga province) and though it is truly a plausible match but she'll do nothing without hearing Sasuke's rare opinion.

Cornering him in her room at the end of the day, the youngest Senju tells her shadow this, watching the flames from her brazier lick at the blank hollows of his face.

"I don't have an opinion," Sasuke replies mutinously.

"You're supposed to," she retorts, and they stare at one another with hackles raised before all the fight leaves him.

"He's a good man," he says eventually.

"He's in love with someone else," Sakura whispers back.

"Isn't everyone?" Sasuke fires at her, and then snaps his teeth shut with his midnight eyes wide.

"What?" Sakura says, although the fingers of suspicion thread through her chest as Sasuke takes a step back and looks like he might run from the room. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing," Sasuke says quickly. Too quickly.

"You have to tell me," she chances, invoking her position of superiority of him.

"My thoughts are my own," Sasuke says, and he looks angry, now, his fists tight against his side and his beautiful black eyes narrowed on her face.

She watches the way he shifts from foot to foot; agitated, uncomfortable, this man she has grown up alongside and knows better than anyone, even herself. Sakura feels as though she is balancing on the edge of his well-honed blade.

"Is your heart?"

The words leave her painted lips before her mind cautions otherwise. The room is their own but she feels as though a thousand eyes are upon her with the force of Sasuke's black gaze.

When he speaks, it's only to whisper _no_; and she sees what he means, what he's not saying, what he cannot.

"Then," Sakura pronounces with the same fervour of her childhood commands, "Naruto will remain my dearest friend. And you…" feeling bold, she places a pale hand on his cheek, the pads of her fingers twitching when Sasuke leans into the touch. "You are my blade in the dark. My right hand man. My confidante."

After that, only the night can tell who leaned into the other's lips first.

* * *

**AN: **Please let me know your thoughts! I'm very tempted to turn this into a larger story.


	2. Multilingual

**AN: **No difference at all from the last chapter, this is a modern!au on the difficulties of being multilingual. My prompt was:

_"__I lied and said I could speak a different language to impress my crush but now he wants me to tutor him so I need to become fluent in Mandarin in 3 days HELP"_

* * *

"I think this is probably the stupidest thing you've ever done in your entire life," says Ino, and Sakura can't do anything but nod her head in misery.

"Why did you say Mandarin, Sakura-chan?" Hinata queries, and her voice is softer but her barbs almost cut deeper. "Why not one of the languages you _do _speak?"

Holding her face in her hands, Sakura speaks around her embarrassment, fingers digging into her temples in agitation. "Because," she mumbles, "Sasuke said he needed to pick up some Mandarin for a business trip, and he _remembered _I speak some languages, and when he asked if one of them was Mandarin I just…"

The rest of the story is obvious, if the sighs around the table tell her anything. Tenten shakes her head deploringly and Sakura sees it through the small slits of vision afforded through her fingers.

"Well," the brunette suggests, "you could always just teach him a few words of Cantonese, throw him off the scent."

Sakura shoots her friend an unimpressed frown. "Tenten, you know more than anyone else the differences between the two languages," she remonstrates, and is rewarded with the sight of her friend's canines as she grins. As a first generation Chinese immigrant, Tenten is intimately familiar with the ways both languages get conflated with one another.

"Yeah, but Sasuke only speaks Japanese and English, right?"

"I think so."

"Then it'll probably fool him," she finishes.

"Can't you just teach me Mandarin?"

There's polite - and less polite, from Ino - tittering around the table.

"Sakura," pipes Temari, "you're a genius, but I don't even think _you _could learn a language in three days."

"Watch me," the pink-haired woman replies darkly, and it's the last her friends see of her until the morning of the day of reckoning. They've regrouped in the same brunch place, a miracle of scheduling in and of itself but even moreso because Ino comes prepared with the makeup, Hinata brings along her hairbrush and Tenten has written a few flashcards to give to Sasuke on her behalf.

"Sakura," Temari says critically, eyeing her friend as she slides into the booth. "When did you last sleep?"

"Tuesday," the woman in question replies, but there's a hint of humour. "I'm a doctor, I can take a few sleepless nights."

"What Temari is trying to elegantly say, Forehead," and Ino's holding up a commanding finger, "is that you were about to go on a date looking like absolute shit."

Sakura blinks. Sucks up the rest of her mimosa and then shrugs, trying and failing to keep the nervousness from her features. "It's not a date," she says defensively, then looks down at her plate when the rest of the women express their disbelief. "I'm helping him out with something. In a friendly way."

"Oh, _sure_," Ino agrees, "and where are you doing this helping out?"

Sakura names one of the most exclusive restaurants in the city, and the admission raises some excitement amongst the girls. The rest of the brunch is spent strategising, helping and teasing in that order, and Sakura leaves them behind armed with flashcards, Hinata's best pearls and Ino's coveted cashmere jumper.

When she sees Sasuke sat at the table, Sakura almost turns and runs out the door, but she's not fourteen any more and it's been over ten years since the last time he told her she was _annoying. _Still, when he raises his head from the menu and _smiles, _really smiles, like he's pleased to see her, Sakura is glad that her hands are full otherwise they'd be wringing themselves into oblivion.

"Sakura," he greets in his usual way, standing up and pulling her chair out to help her sit down. She remembers their last conversation, the one that had gotten her into this mess, and she can't do anything but give him a wide smile back before spreading the flashcards over the table.

"I've brought loads of materials for you to get started with-" she begins, speaking far too quickly.

Sasuke nods along and then scolds her in his particular gentle way:

"I thought we could eat, first."

Sakura is half-tempted to start shouting in Cantonese, or English, or German, or any of the other languages she knows that aren't Japanese. But that would probably get them thrown out of the restaurant, so she simply lets Sasuke order for her - his taste is far better than hers - and manages to eat with minimal outbursts.

"So when's your trip?" she asks eventually, clutching the stem of her wine.

Sasuke frowns, then pulls out his phone to check. "Saturday, actually."

"Tomorrow," she confirms. He has always been loose with dates and times, except for when he's meeting herself or Naruto, and it's funny to see that continue into his professional life. "You want me to teach you Mandarin… for a trip you're going on tomorrow."

"Aa."

"Well," Sakura says, feeling infinitely relieved, "we'll probably only have time to go over the very basics…"

During her university years, she'd paid part of her tuition by tutoring in languages and it's something Sakura knows how to do very well (when it's something she can speak), so the fact is that going over greetings, numbers and days of the week is probably within what she'd crammed over the last few days.

"Shall we start?" she queries, and Sasuke just nods, chin balanced on his hand as he watches her smooth out flashcards.

"That's not your handwriting," he observes after a moment, and Sakura looks down at Tenten's handiwork.

"No," she says, thinking fast, "this is some of the materials my teacher gave me when I learned."

"Hn," is Sasuke's only comment, and she spends the next ten minutes coaching him through the basics of _hello, goodbye, my name is… _

"How would I ask whether someone wants to go for dinner?" Sasuke interrupts.

"Like… for a date?"

Sasuke smirks, leans forward a little, and taps the folder of work he'd put next to his empty plate. "No, like professionally."

Of course. Sakura hasn't been on many business trips - it's not what she does, right in the thick of the action - but it's fairly standard procedure to wine and dine the kind of clients she knows Sasuke courts. The only thing is… she hadn't thought to ask Tenten how to say that.

"Um," she hedges. She could attempt to brush him off with some Cantonese, but Sasuke is far from stupid, and Sakura's sure he'd see through the ruse.

"I was looking online," Sasuke starts, and Sakura finds she can't meet his dark eyes, "and I think it went something like this…"

He says something in Mandarin, and Sakura is too distracted to hear the suspiciously accurate tone of his voice. Sakura bites her bottom lip, missing the slowly spreading smirk on Sasuke's face, and answers him with false brightness in her tone.

"Yes, I would think that would work!" she lies, nodding furiously. She'll just have to trust he hadn't looked anything strange up.

"Hn," Sasuke muses, "that's funny."

It's as though he's plunged her head first into a bucket of ice. "How… how so?"

"Well, I just asked if you'd accompany me back to my hotel room. Is that how business works in the medical world?"

He cocks his head to the side, innocent as all hell except Sakura can see the way his eyes are crinkled at the corners. And she's in love with him, but Sakura and Sasuke have also been friends for a very long time, so it's with real feeling that she says "damn it, Sasuke, can you speak Mandarin?"

He shrugs, but it's decidedly affirmative and she sighs deeply. "Why did you pretend not to?"

The dark-haired businessman leans back in his chair, folding his hands on his knee and looking inordinately pleased with himself. "I wanted to eat here," he explains, but Sakura doesn't buy it.

"With your position, you could get a reservation here any day of the week," she scolds, unimpressed.

"With you," Sasuke clarifies, and watches as she flushes red from the roots of her hair to her neck. "I wanted to eat here with you."

"Oh," is all she can manage.

"Oh," Sasuke repeats, and then gives her his devastating smile, accompanied by a string of fast-spoken Mandarin. It sounds suspiciously similar to what he'd said before, but she doesn't _quite _think he'd ask her to a non-existent hotel room.

"Did you just…?" she queries, but can't quite say the words.

"Ask you to dinner?" Sasuke finishes, draining his wine and tapping his chin thoughtfully before nodding.

"Yes," he says, and it's a second before she processes that he'd said this in perfect Cantonese.

"Damn you, Sasuke," she repeats in kind, but it's rewarded with her favourite smile and she thinks _maybe, maybe I'll let him away with it. _

Then he repeats the offer in English, in German, and finally in Japanese, and Sakura decides that perhaps Uchiha Sasuke doesn't deserve anything but the sight of her rosy red cheeks.

* * *

**AN: **There you go! I think that this world is pretty funny, also I love the idea of disorganised businessman!Sasuke being a tease.


	3. Spousal Visa

**AN: **This prompt was from the lovely birkastan2018, who requested a "my greencard got denied, let's get married?" style AU. I had a ton of fun with this one! It ended up so long I almost made it a one-shot in its own right.

* * *

They're sitting at the local ramen joint when Sasuke comes out with four words that change the course of Sakura's life forever.

"My visa got refused."

She thinks she might be choking to death, but Naruto's there to pat her back and they both stare at their friend with identical incredulity.

"What?" she manages wheezily. Teuchi, noticing her continued distress, passes her a fresh glass of cool water and she chugs it with unselfconscious abandon.

"My visa," Sasuke repeats, slowly, "was denied."

Naruto is the first to explode, throwing his hands up into the air with trademark tension. "But your mum is from Konoha!" he yells, loud enough that the other patrons in Ichiraku turn to stare.

Sasuke pinches the bridge of his nose with his hand, which Sakura recognises as one of the tells that means he's minutes away from losing his temper. As though he's told them the weather will be rainy tomorrow, and they're overreacting.

"But I was born in Oto," he explains, "and Konoha doesn't recognise matrilineal citizenship."

"That's sexist," Sakura comments automatically, and Sasuke throws her a look but continues to sit as though they're blowing things out of proportion.

The three of them sit for a few hot mouthfuls of ramen in silence, while Sakura contemplates life after university at the same time as life after Sasuke. Their plans would be up in smoke; he'd been planning to freelance for his father's company in Konoha, establish a branch in Fire country and continue to live and work alongside Sakura and Naruto. He'd have done the groundwork properly; for the visa to be denied meant there was no chance of it being appealed.

"So what can we do?" Naruto asks, always the planner. Sakura stares into the greasy remains of her lunch, waiting to hear Sasuke dismiss them coldly with an _I'm going home_ or _goodbye, then_.

"Well," the Uchiha says, hands interlaced under his chin, "I could always marry Sakura."

Time seems to slow down for a moment, and the first thing Sakura notices is not, in fact, the love of her life essentially proposing to her, but rather the way Naruto's eyes go so wide his lashes tangle at the corners.

She stands up. Teuchi grips the counter anxiously, Naruto's face has turned the colour of puce, and Sasuke hasn't even bothered to turn around and face her properly.

When she walks out of the restaurant it's without paying, but somehow Sakura thinks Teuchi will let her off this once.

* * *

"_I don't think he meant it, Sakura-chan, really I don't. You know how Sasuke gets." _

"_Sasuke doesn't make flippant comments." _

"_Yeah, but…" _

"_But he doesn't propose over half-eaten bowls of ramen, either? With you sitting in the middle? With his hands under his chin and a bored expression?" _

"_Ah…"_

"_Because he just did that, Naruto." _

* * *

It's a week before she sees him again, and though Sakura is tempted to acquaint his beautiful cheekbones with the sharp side of her fist, she simply folds her arms (to curb the temptation) and lets Sasuke speak first.

"Naruto informs me I fucked up," he says.

Sakura shuts the door in his face. Then stands on the other side, waiting to hear if he'll walk away or pull out his phone and request backup. He does neither. She hears a distinct sigh, then the sound of her letterbox being disturbed and Sasuke's voice sounds from somewhere around her midsection.

"Open the door," he commands, and though she bites her lip at obeying him Sakura does it anyway.

"I hate you, Sasuke-kun," she says vividly, stepping aside to let him into her house. He doesn't acknowledge it, hearing it for the lie that it is, and he doesn't stop walking until he's leaning against the kitchen counter at the back of her small home.

"I'm sorry about the other day," Sasuke intones, and it sounds like he's reading lines fed to him by their blonde friend. He probably is. "I didn't mean to say that."

Sakura knocks her head against the doorframe, pink hair sliding from its messy ponytail to tickle her shoulders. "No, you did," she argues tiredly, the fight leaving her all at once.

Sasuke eyes her from across the room, and she watches him assessing her tired posture, limp arms and baggy clothes. He'd dropped this particular bombshell on her in the week after her last exam and she's grateful for it, because Sakura's barely been able to feed herself let alone think, or study, or function in society.

"Hn, I did," Sasuke agrees. "Getting married would make sense," he continues, and because he's looking up at her ceiling he misses the way Sakura's hands curl into fists at her sides. "It would let me establish myself here in Konoha, my family would be able to fund your continued medical education, it would increase our credit scores, and I feel people respond better to married people in a business context…"

Sasuke rarely speaks for so long and even though every item in the list infuriates her more and more, Sakura's a little shamefully glad to just listen to the cadence of his voice. But, she's got to-

"Sasuke," Sakura interrupts. "I couldn't do it."

"Why?" he asks, and her friend sounds so genuinely confused that Sakura feels five years of subtlety slide down the drain.

"Because," Sakura intones with all the finality she feels, "I'm in love with you."

* * *

Part of her thinks she'll never see him again after her declaration, but it's less than a week before Sakura bumps into Sasuke at the tea shop on the corner.

"Oh," she says at the same time he mumbles "hey."

Gathering her courage and sitting across from him - after all, despite the disastrous mess they've caused he _is _her best friend and he _is _leaving in a few short weeks - Sakura casts her eyes over what he's ordered and frowns.

"You don't eat anmitsu," she declares, pointing to the sweet dessert in front of him, piled enticingly with cherries and her favourite red bean jelly.

"No," he says, "but you do." Taking another bite of the syrupy-sweet treat, Sakura stares in confusion as Sasuke's fine features crumple in stark dislike.

"This is far too- how do you eat-"

He pushes it across the table. "Here."

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth (or think too deeply about what he'd said), Sakura accepts graciously, and devours the sweet while Sasuke silently cradles his much-preferred green tea.

"So why were you trying to defeat your mortal enemy, sugar?"

Sasuke rolls his eyes but she can see the smile playing the corner of his lips. "I thought I'd try to find out about- about some of the things you like."

"Why?" Sakura says, instantly suspicious. "It's not so that I'll marry you, is it? Because I won't."

Ignoring the way nearby patrons stare at her declaration, Sasuke puts his hands on his temples and closes his eyes, showing her the delicate frown he's been trying to smooth from his face.

"No, it's not for that," he affirms. "I realised after-" and they _both _colour, "afterwards, that maybe I didn't know you as well as I thought I did."

Sakura feels warm from her fingers to her toes, and tries very hard not to reward him with a smile. She fails, but his answering hesitant smirk makes her a winner anyway.

"But," Sasuke continues, "you can keep your sweets."

Sakura's laughter is so loud they nearly get thrown out of the tea shop, and even though it's her favourite place she finds she doesn't care.

* * *

"Sakura," Sasuke says, waiting while she turns in her seat from where she's been checking his bags.

"Hm?"

He fidgets, and though the movement is slight enough to be almost unnoticeable it is so far removed from his usual cool that she pinpoints it instantly.

"Will you marry me?"

Beside her, Naruto drops the glasses he'd been carrying to the table.

"Now?" the blonde asks. "You waited to ask until _now_?"

Sakura frowns at her friend as he scrambles to pick up the shards coating the airport floor.

"I've been wandering around for like an hour, man. You had _so much time_."

Blinking in disbelief as she watches Sasuke shove Naruto with surprising vehemence, Sakura holds up a hand when the fight looks like it might escalate. Sasuke has a flight to catch, after all.

"What did you say?" she manages.

Sasuke opens his mouth to repeat himself, but Naruto covers his hands with his ears and takes exaggerated steps away from the table.

"You might as well watch the third attempt, idiot," Sasuke scolds, and Naruto freezes in place.

Sasuke turns back to where Sakura's tearing her napkin to shreds.

"Sakura," he says, "will you marry me?"

She swallows. "But you're going home."

"Yeah."

"But… but I love you."

This time, Sasuke colours, and she's entranced by the way the flush winds its way up his neck.

"...yeah."

"It's too late to sort your visa," Sakura mumbles, and is taken by surprise when Sasuke shrugs.

"For now, yeah," he says. "But you could always get one for Oto."

"Get one for…" she repeats his words, the realisation of what he's asking, offering dawning on her. _It's not to stay in Konoha. _"You want to marry me?" Sakura queries, tremulous.

"I want to marry you," Sasuke mirrors, and slides a plane ticket hesitantly across the cheap formica of the airport table. And there's something romantic about that, she thinks, but it's topped when he unfolds the envelope with a steady hand and she sees the sparkle of a ring tucked away in the folds.

"Sasuke-kun," Sakura murmurs, and then nods. There's an instant where it's just the two of them and Sasuke is smiling, really smiling. But because since the first day of their friendship it's never been the two of them but the _three, _the moment isn't ruined, just changed, when Naruto wails,

"Wait, Sakura-chan get a visa for Oto? How will _I _get one?"

He sounds so morose, though Sakura can't hold back the laugh when Sasuke entwines her hand with his, shrugs with all his practiced disinterest, and says,

"You should call my cousin Hinata back."

* * *

**AN: **Sassy Sasuke gives me life.


	4. Am I Your Lockscreen?

**AN: **This is a medical!au, featuring Sasuke as a surgeon, Naruto (!) also as a surgeon and of course our favourite Sakura-chan. Prompt was:

"Am I your lockscreen?" / "You weren't supposed to see that"

* * *

He throws his tray down on the the table with such vehemence that half the hospital canteen turn and stare. Of course, Sasuke doesn't notice (or care) and Sakura waits for the inevitable sigh to pass from his lips as he hits the chair.

"Fucking Naruto," he says, instead. Well: that was different, but along the same lines as his usual tirades, so she puts her chin in her hand and gives him her best empathetic stare.

"Oh?" she prompts after a few minutes of angry silence. Sakura's time is precious; she knows what the hospital charges on her behalf, and though she'd listen to Sasuke recite his plans for his weekend laundry if he wanted she really _doesn't _have long.

Sasuke shoots her a dark-eyed glare. Then catches himself when she raises a slender pink eyebrow, softening the look until he's treating her to one of his rare rueful smiles.

"Sorry," he mumbles, and she takes a second to relish in the fact that Sasuke regularly apologises to maybe three people in the entire world, herself included. "He's asked for a second opinion on his surgery this evening."

"Bad timing," Sakura says, wincing sympathetically. It's the annual Doctor's Ball and if Naruto wants Sasuke to help him out, it will leave the Uchiha with time to do little more than wash off the hospital stench before heading to the event. And Sasuke, even for a doctor, has a thing for cleanliness.

"It is," he agrees, dropping his spoon into his half-eaten curry. "And I dropped my pager, so I've had to take my phone on the rounds."

"Because he can't pick a time," she says knowingly, watching as the Uchiha heir nods grimly. With a start, he pulls the device out, checking it reflexively before shaking his head and putting it face up on the table between them. He sighs this time, and for no other reason than to coax a smile back onto his face Sakura offloads the tomatoes from her salad onto the side of his plate.

It works. Just like she knew it would; just like it had always worked since she'd done it at ten, fifteen, twenty-five. There _was_ a reason for the rumours that suggested she'd followed him into the profession, or vice versa.

The truth? She'll never tell.

"Turning up fashionably late isn't the end of the world, Sasuke-kun," she says with a smile. "And you know you and Naruto work well together. If he's asking for help…"

"I know, I know." And he does: Sasuke's one of the best surgeons they have. "It's just that Father gets…"

"Irritating when you're late?" She's not a fan of the eldest Dr. Uchiha.

"Hn."

They sit in companionable silence for a while, Sakura stretching her break out to the limits for more time next to her favourite person in the world. She notices that Sasuke doesn't seem in a hurry, either.

There's an inoffensive _buzz _that quickly resolves itself to be an alert on Sasuke's phone - which he glances at, sees it's not Naruto, and then disregards. And Sakura's not nosy, but there's something that makes her do a double-take. And then a triple take, before the screen goes black and she has a moment where she could let it go. On the other hand…

"Am I your lockscreen?"

Nobody ever said she thought first, spoke second.

"Uh-," and Sasuke's head swings round so fast his long hair snaps against her cheek, "you weren't supposed to see that."

"Can I see it again?"

"No."

"Sasuke…"

"It's a picture of the three of us at last winter's ball."

She thinks that might be half the truth; the glimpse of her face she'd seen looked remarkably put-together for her usual self.

"Oh, that's lovely!" she says with false innocence. It doesn't fool him for a second. "Can't you show me?"

"No, I look terrible in it."

"Doctor Uchiha Sasuke, pleading vanity?" Sakura holds her hand to her chest in mock shock. "Never."

"For the love of- _here," _he grumbles, shoving the phone into her hands. It's locked, and the screen Sakura is presented with is innocuous enough.

Four buttons later and she's back to the picture she saw earlier. Sasuke wasn't quite telling the truth; it _is_ a picture of them at the winter ball, only he's resized it so that only Sakura is visible. It's a pretty picture - she looks happy and elegant and not at all frazzled.

"Wait, how did you-" he looks utterly surprised that she knew his pass code, and she blushes a deep red.

"Um, I put in my birthday…"

His face matches hers for brightness, and there's a pause. Sakura idly wonders which one of them will run away first. But then-

"Will you wait for me this evening?"

"To get to the Doctor's Ball?"

Sasuke nods, looking serious. She matches it with a smile that broadens against her will.

"Of course," she says emphatically. "I happen to love being fashionably late."

Sasuke's answering smirk is worth years and years of filched tomatoes.

* * *

**AN: **I liked this universe, so I wrote a bit of a prequel which I'll post up in a few days.


	5. Favour

"_The very purpose of a knight is to fight on behalf of a lady" - Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur_

******AN:** This is a medieval AU, something very dear to my heart as my literature thesis was on medieval literature! I love knights so much. I also love Sasuke as a knight, so here we are.

* * *

"My lady Sakura," says Lee, her most loyal friend in the town, "my lady, will you give me a favour for the tournament?"

She looks at him from behind her rare silk fan, watching as his squire adjusts the thin chainmail over his bright green jerkin.

"Lee," Sakura sighs, but it's with a smile, "I will give you a favour if you'll ride out to joust with nothing but the armour of your amour."

He doesn't get it, although her lady in waiting does, and Ino's gleeful laughter paints the confusion clear across the black-haired knight's face. "I…" he begins, then sees the way that Hinata, and Tenten, and the other ladies smile behind long sleeves. "One day I'll get a favour from you, Sakura!"

And with that, he leaves, her aunt Tsunade rolling her eyes to the heavens as he trots off to his tent, pages in tow. "I've told him a hundred times…" she laments, stroking a possessive hand over her niece's pale pink hair. Only the best for Sakura. Only the most worthy.

"Does any other knight wish to make a claim, or can we finally start?" Tsunade queries imperiously, and the force of her annoyance quails a few men who'd looked ready to approach the ladies' stand. All but the oldest Uzumaki boy, a summer-skinned knight no older than twenty.

He's taken with Hinata, Sakura knows, and it's mutual affection, the finest example of courtly love she's heard since the tragic tale of her aunt and her pauper lover. But Hinata is not the princess here, and it would be _unspeakably _rude to request a token not from the main lady, but from the main lady's friend.

Sakura hopes he will do it anyway, just for the minstrel's telling of the tale. Sure enough there's silence around the jousting grounds as he steps forward, walking confidently to where her raven-haired friend sits in blushing anticipation. People start to whisper, Hinata's face starts to enflame and her aunt begins to look truly ferocious when Naruto gestures over his shoulder, beckoning a second knight through from the crowd.

Instantly, Sakura knows, _hopes_ this knight has come to speak to her. He is the antithesis to her spring, dressed in dark leather with chainmail as black as his hair, his face a prince's ransom were it not for the bored cast to his features. Beside her, Ino sighs, and Sakura knows this nameless knight will be the subject of not a few commissions from her ladies.

"Sakura!" Naruto calls, and waves with none of the propriety they've been taught. "I've come to make an exchange - a friend for a friend!"

It's surprisingly clever. By centring the request around herself Naruto has avoided any insult he would have caused in passing her over, yet at the same time the pink-haired princess notes his friend looks reluctant to seal the deal.

"I see," she says, and watches as the crowds strain to catch the words falling from behind rose lips. "Your friend looks displeased to be used thus."

Sakura fixes this unknown knight with a green-eyed stare, her best impression of her impassive aunt's frown stretched across her delicate features. He looks straight back.

"What is a knight," he starts, and his voice is melodious enough that Ino's nails dig fearfully into the skin of her forearm, "but to fight on behalf of a lady?"

Announcement made, he shrugs into a half kind-of bow, low enough to be proper but courting at arrogance.

"A poor one who does so by force," Sakura muses, lower, but he picks it up all the same. "What is your name?"

"Sasuke." he acknowledges her rebuke with a tilt of his head, and Sakura misses the way Tsunade's eyes narrow with suspicion.

"Well then, Sasuke," Sakura pronounces, and the masses hold their breath as she gives judgement, "you may fight on my behalf."

"No favour?" he asks, and it's just rude enough that even Naruto widens his eyes in shock. The horses, led out to exercise in the run-up to the main event, are the only noise in the whole arena. Sakura waits to see if he will squirm under his words, but this mysterious dark knight simply stands and watches her with the deepest eyes she has ever seen.

"I told my friend Lee," Sakura says slowly, "that I would give him a favour if he fought in nothing but the armour of his amour."

She puts a hand to her chin. "But I think there is no love lost here, and so I fear it wouldn't be much protection at all."

Sasuke nods, then with a movement so sudden Tsunade's guards heft their poleaxes he grasps the bottom of his mail overcoat and pulls it over his head. Even with his hair mussed and his jerkin misaligned, Sasuke looks sinfully good, and when he inclines his head to her again Sakura cannot help the smattering of pink across her cheeks.

"We'll see," he challenges, and even Tsunade snorts in amusement at the way he leaves his armour on the ground. Then he wins the first match, and then the second, and by the fifth Sakura is contemplating whether or not she's been led a merry dance, tricked into accepting the regard of some mythical creature come to her kingdom.

It's at the end of the tournament, when Sasuke stretches out his hand to receive his prize and grasps her wrist instead of her proffered handkerchief that Sakura thinks maybe, just maybe, he and Naruto had planned it all along.

* * *

Thoughts? This time period fascinates me.


	6. Pancakes

**AN: **This is in the same universe as the 'Am I Your Lockscreen?' prompt, featuring once again hot doctor!sasuke and tired doctor!sakura. It's set before the previous prompt, right when they first qualify as doctors with all the accompanying late nights and stress. The prompt was for roommates - and of course, there's only one bed :-)

* * *

"I can't live with him any more," Sasuke says, and if it wasn't three AM on the fourth day of criminally scheduled shifts, Sakura would smile at the obvious strain in his voice. But it is, and so she does little more than move to the side so he can make his moody way into the living room.

"Sasuke-kun," she mumbles, watching from the doorway as he paces back and forth across her new carpet, "it's only been a month."

"A month too long," he growls darkly, running his hand through his hair and frowning at her. "Did I wake you up?"

She levels him with a blank look, and is gratified to see the chagrined flush of his cheeks.

"Sorry," her friend mutters, and Sakura blinks in surprise at one of his rare apologies. "It's just… I came home from a really difficult surgery, took my shoes off and stood in wet ramen."

She grimaces in sympathetic disgust. "Why is our best friend an animal?"

Sasuke puts his face in his hands. "I don't know," he mutters, and his bloodshot eyes mirror her own. "But I didn't feel like cleaning up more blood after murdering him, so I just left and came here."

There's a clear plea in his voice and Sakura - though she'd already planned on it when he walked in - relents immediately. "Stay here for tonight, Sasuke," she offers. "I'm not working tomorrow, so you won't be disturbing my sleep."

He sags, relieved, and she holds back a yawn in the dark of her still-unfamiliar living room. It's been a difficult month for the three of them; she, Naruto and Sasuke had finally gotten their residencies at the Uchiha General, and between lack of sleep, poor schedules and moving house right in their first week, tempers were clearly running short.

"Why didn't I move in with you instead?" Sasuke groans under his breath, and Sakura almost says _well, you didn't ask, _but it's late and she's exhausted, so she simply giggles and gestures over her shoulder.

"Come on," she calls, but Sasuke doesn't move.

"I'll sleep on the couch," he says, voice tired but strained.

Sakura puts both hands on her hips, flicks the lightswitch off, and stands her ground in the living room doorway. "I have a double bed," she reminds him, "and we've slept in smaller cots on the wards."

"That's…"

_Different, _she thinks, but shrugs all the same. "I'm tired, you're tired, I've got a memory foam mattress."

He still looks unconvinced.

"Think of it like a sleepover, like the old days," she coaxes.

Sasuke rolls his dark eyes, but he takes two steps forward and Sakura knows it's her victory. And her thoughts are innocent, truly; she wouldn't wish her couch on anyone, let alone an exhausted six-foot-two surgeon with a penchant for bad moods in the morning.

"It's a bit different than when we were five," Sasuke grumbles, but he follows her obediently into her bedroom.

She turns her back to give him privacy while he strips off his trousers, handing him a spare top from her pyjama drawer - which he takes with a raised brow and unspoken accusation, because it's one of his - and they settle into bed with just a hint of gingerness.

"Thanks for this, Sakura," he sighs, arms folded behind his head. "I really couldn't bear my place tonight."

She turns on her side to face him, smiling at the way the moonlight turns his dark hair blue in its soft silver light.

"It's fine," she waves him off, "I don't particularly want you to murder Naruto."

"You should try living with him," Sasuke says, and she can see the way his eyes are struggling to stay open, knows he's trying not to simply fall asleep on her. "I'm getting my own place once the lease is up."

"Mm," Sakura replies noncommittally, the offer that he could just stay here, indefinitely, crowding behind gritted teeth. "Well, any time he's gone feral, you know you're welcome here…"

She trails off as Sasuke shifts onto his side to face her, and he's so close she can see the length of his lashes as they caress the fine bones of his cheeks.

"That might be often," he mumbles, and he's half-asleep before he finishes speaking. But Sakura doesn't care, because by the time she's processed what Sasuke said, she's fallen asleep too.

It's rare for someone to share her bed, Sakura thinks blearily, waking up in the small hours with her face firmly pressed into Sasuke's chest and the weight of his arm thrown across her side. That is, of course, her excuse for not moving. And it's her excuse when she wakes up the second time to find Sasuke on his back and she on her side, curled up into him like a kitten, his hand possessively on her hip.

When she wakes up the third time the bed is empty and cold, but Sakura grins to herself anyway. There's a sound in the kitchen that's suspiciously like Sasuke whistling to himself while he makes one of his legendary breakfasts, and if her nose isn't deceiving her he's outdone himself with her favourite pancakes.

_I could_, she thinks cheekily, _take Sasuke for a roommate, easily. _

There's five months left on his lease; face buried in Sasuke's scent on her pillow Sakura wonders if her junior surgeon's salary would stretch to a few more crates of ramen.

* * *

**AN:** Hope you enjoyed! I really like this universe and I'd love to expand on it one day.


	7. Horses: An Aside

**AN: **This is an aside for my _Blade in the Dark _universe, set a while after Sakura has made friends with the Uzumaki Clan but before Naruto is proposed as her suitor. I love this AU a lot!

(I'm back from my holidays so I'll be resuming updates of all my AUs every few days)

* * *

"Sasuke," Sakura says, the morning of the day she turns seventeen. "Teach me how to ride a horse."

Her shadow pauses in sharpening his weapons, throwing her the blank look he's perfected for when she asks for the moon.

"Why?" he asks evenly, and the question - not outright refusal - throws her off.

"I want to," Sakura replies, shrugging, though the thick layers of her kimono muffle the movement.

He looks unimpressed. It's an emotion she's only recently been able to read from him, caught as he is in the throws of servitude. She will never tell, but there's a ghost of a pout when he looks like this and it makes her almost, _almost_ give in.

"We can go to town, if you want," Sasuke offers instead. "I'll ask my mother and Tsunade-sama for use of the carriage."

"I don't…"

She hates the carriage. The curtains are too thick and the seat surprisingly hard, a narrow, airless box with oppressive wooden slats and horses so old she feels they should be retired. A space where Sasuke is now too big to sit next her and sneak her sweets. No: Sakura does _not _want to ride in the accursed vehicle. She tells Sasuke this, and is rewarded with his folded arms and the tilt of his head that means rare absolute refusal.

"Horses are dangerous," he chides.

"_You're_ dangerous," Sakura fires back, and is amused at the way his eyes widen and then settle back into black tranquility. Though he's proved his danger well over, he looks anything but threatening as they sit in the garden; she's been decorating his lap with folded paper cranes for the last hour, in preparation for the thousand she'll release to her subjects in celebration of her birth.

"Yes, but I wouldn't-," Sasuke snaps his mouth shut, but the pink-haired princess knows what he was about to say, the unspoken truth of his dedication.

"Show me how to ride," she entreats. "Please."

And orders don't often work on him, but requests do, and Sasuke stands lithely, scattering colourful cranes at his feet. He holds out a wordless hand to her, grip tightening around her smooth touch as he pulls her to stand next to him. There's a breathless moment where Sakura thinks _ah, I'm too close, or he is, _before he steps back and frowns in grudging acceptance.

"Do not," he cautions as they move towards the back of the palace, "tell your mother."

He's still holding on to her hand, so Sakura simply squeezes it in silent acquiescence.

Eventually, the pair come to a halt in front of the stables. She's embarrassed to discover that her rich, formal kimono (though only suitable for morning wear) is entirely unsuited for what they've come to do, but Sasuke simply leads Sakura to see the horses, shooing out the workers who stop to gawk at their young princess.

"First," he says quietly, coming up to stand at her shoulder as she pats the nose of a docile-looking roan, "we'll have you ride in front of me, to get used to the movement."

With her back to him, Sakura blinks, confused. Then she understands what he means: not on a _different _beast, but sharing the same animal. His arms come around her to demonstrate, strong fingers splayed against the wood of the stall door; a closeness so static and sudden that her breath stalls in her chest.

"It'll be a little cramped," she says with a lightness she doesn't feel.

"Hn," he agrees, moving around her to slip into the enclosure.

The Senju princess pictures them together, hazy recollection of a book of poems she'd stolen from Shizune-san aiding her imagination. Though he's held her while she slept and she'd held him while he bled, this feels different, a boundary so murky it's barely there stretching between the offer and the reality.

"Ah," she mumbles, all awkward angles and stuttered expression. "Maybe I'll just watch _you _ride, instead."

Sasuke straightens from where he'd been stroking the horse's long forelocks. She sees, with a start, the way the young man is smirking at her from the shadows of the stable, a look that ignites his deep black eyes with insolent warmth. It makes her feel… before she can examine the fire in her belly, Sasuke opens his mouth and speaks, voice rich with rare amusement.

"Anything you wish, my lady," he says with a short bow, before turning around to murmur in the horse's ear. Sakura feels abruptly jealous of the absent affection; almost requests the same before her princess' intuition halts her tongue.

It's then, all at once, that Sakura realises she would take anything, _everything_ Sasuke offered, but only if he gave it to her freely.

Watching as he smiles a smile not meant for the horse, the Senju princess thinks that maybe, one day, her blade just might.

* * *

**AN:** Oh I just love this universe. I think I'll expand it after I finish one of my WIPs.


	8. Young

**AN:** Hello all! This time the prompt was for Arranged Marriage - and aren't they always just a little bittersweet? That's what I'm aiming for here.

* * *

"It's either you marry her, or your brother does," Fugaku explains, his hands heavy on Sasuke's shoulders. "Do you understand?"

Sasuke looks up into his father's fathomless eyes, feels the weight of them, of his touch, of his expectations, of years of familial loyalty bled through him until he doesn't know how to say _no, don't do this to me_.

"Nii-san-" he tries.

"Your brother," Sasuke's father intones, "has to marry someone of Uchiha blood. For the future. Do you understand?"

_Do you? Do you? _The words haunt him as his father walks away, the uchiwa in his hand shivering not from the wind but from his own discomfort. The younger son. The disposable one, the existence bred as a precaution, a fix-it-all, a person only in relation to how much he _understands _what the family needs.

Itachi finds him sitting there long after the cold sun has set.

"Little brother," he starts, then stops. There is nothing young about marrying a woman you don't want. "Sasuke."

"Itachi," Sasuke replies, turning to see the way his brother's worry has etched itself onto his already too-weary face. "I'll do it."

"I'll marry the Senju heir."

* * *

He's met the Haruno Sakura a few times before, but never in the formality of a wedding ceremony. She looks exactly like he does: dolled up, trussed out and left to sweat under too many eyes and too heavy a pressure.

"Sasuke-kun," she greets, and it's the first words they've exchanged in several years, since he stole an apple from her while she played in his family's field.

Neither of them play much anymore.

"Sakura," he answers, and just like that, they go to get married.

"What age are you?" she asks afterwards, when they get a moment to change. She peels the first of ten layers off, green eyes blinking at him from across the changing room. "When I saw you last, you were so much shorter than me."

Sasuke almost doesn't reply, but the part of him that his mother loves thinks _she is my wife_, and so he tells her he's almost twenty.

"When is your birthday?" she prompts further, now down to six layers and thinner for it.

"July."

"Ah," Sakura says, looking happy for the first time all day. "Then I'm older."

He doesn't grace that with a response, but she sees the way he rolls his black eyes and tries to toss her hair; only it's full of ornaments and unstable with it, capricious along with the temper he can see she's trying to hold back.

"We're young, aren't we?" Sakura tries again, and he hears the steady _thud thud thud_ of her kimono layers being discarded on the floor. He has lost count of how many she's shed now, his back to her as he frowns over the unfamiliar buttons of his married man's clothing. "To have so much peace riding on our shoulders."

At that, he turns around, only to find she's taken everything off, everything, and is standing in the dim room with the mercurial caution of a bird about to take wing.

"Put your clothes back on," Sasuke manages. He is not entirely immune, but something about the unwilling bend of her shoulders makes him want to pile the thick silks back onto her almost-confident frame.

"I see," his wife says.

And it's the last thing she says to him all day. And the next. And the next.

* * *

They spend three months in her family's estate, and three months in his. She turned twenty surrounded by all the people she loves, but Sasuke can't claim the same.

"Your wife is not pregnant," his father notes, where Sasuke sits with the adult men now instead of the younger clansmen. A few faces turn to stare.

"No," Sasuke agrees.

"Are you a coward between the legs as well as between your ears?"

It's one of the elders, because even Sasuke's father doesn't speak to his son like that. He feels the tempting embrace of the sharingan thread through his vision, but it's his brother's held-back snarl that checks Sasuke's temper.

"We're young," he offers instead of blows, and his eyes that see not-quite-all miss the way his father's expression smoothes into pride when Sasuke stands up and leaves.

He's walking along the outer garden wall when he sees his wife; Sakura has taken up residence under her favourite tree, watching the way the water threads through the nearby stream.

"Sasuke-kun," she greets, and it's not warm, but it's not quite cold either. He's learned that she finds it very hard to hold a grudge.

"Sakura," he says. Some days, it is the extent of their conversation, but tonight he leans down and sits next to her, right on the still-wet grass.

"I really thought I'd marry your brother, you know."

The blossom-haired girl says it conversationally, but Sasuke thinks _of course, of course_.

"You'd have to be an Uchiha," he explains.

Surprisingly, Sakura smiles. It's not warm, but nor is it cold either; in fact, he likes it not at all.

"Right? That's why I'm glad it didn't happen. Besides, I wouldn't want to be an Uchiha. Your clan all love too much."

Her thoughts imparted, Sasuke watches as his wife stands and walks back to the house with her back straight and his family's emblem displayed boldly under her hair.

"It's too late for that," he whispers, but her ears are no better than his and Sakura walks, walks into the dimness of the house without looking back once.

* * *

She's happier when they spend time in the Senju estate. So at the start of their second year of marriage Sasuke turns to Sakura and asks,

"Do you want to stay here all the time?"

His wife blinks, long pink lashes tangled at the corners.

"As opposed to…"

"Going back to the Uchiha land."

"Where will you be?"

The question surprises him, because Sasuke truly didn't think Sakura was invested enough to voice it. Their marriage is a friendly veneer of peace, shallow below the surface and at risk of drying up without rain.

"I-," he pauses to think. Where was there for him to go? "I'll be wherever you are," he finishes. It's the only answer that makes sense to him now.

When Sakura beams at him, it's one of her rarely gifted true smiles, not her fierce fighter grin or her healer's curve; Sasuke has only seen it three times in the whole of their union.

"That's the fourth time you've smiled," he murmurs without thinking.

"When, today?"

There's no response that wouldn't have her frowning, so the Uchiha shrugs his shoulders and turns back to pickling the umeboshi she loves.

"I'll go back to the Uchiha estate when the time comes," Sakura says eventually, breaking the quiet peace of their afternoon. "I like your tomato garden."

He looks up with a hint of a smile of his own. "Last year," he imparts, and Sakura leans in like he's about to share a secret, "I planted an apple tree."

Sakura loves apples; Sasuke remembers that from the easier days of their youth.

"Trees take a while to grow," Sakura murmurs, but she looks thoughtful.

"We've got time," he answers, casual, and misses the way her green gaze bends to his.

"We do," she agrees, and because he's leaning over his work Sasuke doesn't catch her moving before his wife is right next to his face, her hair drifting across his prized vision.

She kisses him on the cheek. It's their first kiss, or maybe their second: Sasuke doesn't know if the secret peck shared when they were six counts.

"I think you and I have all the time in the world," Sakura continues, and Sasuke nods.

They're only young, after all.

* * *

**AN: **I just really love the idea of Sasuke and Sakura taking their time to get to know one another through the early years of their marriage. This is kind of a feudal setting similar to _Blade in the Dark_: I really feel it fits them. Let me know what you thought!


	9. Call the Nurse

**AN:** The prompt here was for an awkward Sasuke as a teacher and Sakura as the school nurse. I love their dynamic! And of course, Naruto and Kakashi as a PE and English teacher respectively.

_FYI as I've had a few questions along these lines: I take prompts (anonymously) via my tumblr account - which you can find at the same username - but if you don't like to use tumblr, feel free to ask here._

* * *

Sasuke often resents the fact that Naruto followed him into the teaching profession. And then followed him to the same school, proceeding to buy an apartment near his own, encourage him to go out drinking with his colleagues, and generally act so clingy Sasuke has heard them the subject of many teenage girl's rumours.

He has never resented it more than the minute after receiving his best friend's elbow in the ribs, courtesy of his direct disbelief over the appearance of the new school nurse.

"Whoa," Naruto says in a voice far too loud for a teacher. He rubs his palms on his tracksuit, straightening his whistle as though it makes him look anything but sporty. "She's gorgeous."

Sasuke pinches the bridge of his nose, used to Naruto's exaggeration. It must be the white coat bias, because she cannot be _that_-

Then Sasuke looks up.

"Oh shit," he says, even louder than his friend, and Naruto laughs at him all the way to the Principal's office, where he picks up his disciplinary notice with none of his usual gravitas.

After that, Sasuke doesn't see the school nurse for a few days, because she's busy prepping for sports day or whatever faculty nonsense they've cooked up for the new school year.

"Ah, there's Haruno-sensei," Kakashi says while leaning out of his window, cigarette in hand. As his boss Sasuke cannot exactly reprimand the older teacher for smoking in the classroom, but part of him sends a silent prayer that the nurse will notice.

"Excuse me."

Right on cue, he hears a light tone echo up from the courtyard. It's too old to be a student and he doesn't recognise it, so Sasuke reasons it must his wishes being answered.

"Yo, Sakura-chan!"

At that, Sasuke spins to his superior in surprise, coming up to the classroom window to reprimand the silver-haired teacher for his over-familiar attitude.

"Kakashi-sensei," she replies jovially, and Sasuke's stunned again that they appear to be on _first name terms, _"please don't smoke outside of the designated areas."

"Mah, let me finish this one?"

Kakashi has a way with the ladies that he has tried and failed to teach his protege Sasuke. Once again, it appears to have worked when Sakura winks up at the pair of them, tapping her nose secretively.

"Only if you promise to do what I asked of you," she replies mysteriously, sending him a small smile before bowing politely to Sasuke and heading off across the courtyard.

Both men watch her go, although Sasuke doesn't fail to notice that Kakashi coaxes another cigarette out of the packet when she turns the corner.

"Is she married?" the dark-haired teacher asks, a non-sequitur that nevertheless reveals an awful lot about his thoughts. Kakashi has known him since the Uchiha was twelve years old, and it's with real feeling that he throws his head back and laughs.

"Who knows?" Kakashi replies, deliberately obtuse because he is the Literature Dept. head and will therefore have access to staff records. "Do you like her?"

"No."

"Right…" his boss doesn't sound convinced. "Well, do your best at sports day, alright?"

Sasuke does not, in fact, do his best. Though his youth was spent in rough and tumble with Naruto he now works behind a desk and manages a few runs a week, while Naruto teaches PE and spends hours in the sun honing his fitness. It's no longer a fair fight, but that's never stopped him before and it's not until he hears the distinct _crack _that Sasuke wonders if he's overdone it with the teacher's participation.

Sakura-sensei seems to think so, if the way she marches him to her office is any indication.

"I thought," she starts, shooing away the enamoured health representative who reaches for Sasuke's bare leg, "that out of you and your blonde friend, you were the smart one."

"Ah?"

"This," Sakura elaborates, flicking her fingers at his wobbling, uninjured leg. "We aren't teenagers any more! Why did you decide to do every single run?"

Sasuke shrugs, feeling the pleasant burn of exertion in his shoulders as he does so. The motion causes a ripple of squeals to tear through the room as his shirt rides up; Haruno-sensei turns to her pupil assistants and scolds them until they race back to take care of less perilous casualties.

"You're popular," she remarks once they're alone, carefully wrapping his ankle in tape. Sasuke winces. He is; it's been the subject of a lot of teasing from his colleagues.

"So," Sakura continues when he doesn't respond, working away with practised efficiency to the sound of sports whistles, "why did you run so much?"

"I'm competitive," he offers with another shrug, and is surprised to see her laugh genuinely at his words. He flushes, because while she's pretty when she's scolding people, the new school nurse is devastating when she laughs.

"Oh," she manages eventually, though her voice is still rich with laughter, "that was good! I didn't expect you to be so honest."

Sasuke reddens further, scrubbing the back of his neck with his hand in a long-learned nervous habit. And because he's stretched out on the chair, the movement makes his shirt ride up further, giving Sakura an unintentional glimpse of some distinctly defined musculature on his lower torso.

She looks. He sees her, but as a healthcare professional Sakura is unperturbed. Still, it rankles Sasuke, until she declares him ready to go back and observe and asks,

"Are you one of the teachers assigned to the field trip?"

"Hn, yeah, it's near where I grew up. Why, are you?"

"Yes," Sakura replies, and Sasuke almost grins in pleasure until he composes himself. "I just think… you'd better watch out you don't get spied on!"

Her amusement at getting to deliver the line for once keeps him going until the day of the trip itself. She arrives later than everyone but Kakashi himself, breathless with running from the bus stop to their assigned meeting point. She still looks beautiful, Sasuke privately concedes, ignoring Naruto's scandalised expression when he sits down next to her instead of his best friend.

"Shit," she whispers, halfway to their destination.

"Hm?"

Sakura sits up in her seat, craning her neck to assess whether or not people (students) were listening in to their conversation.

"I was in a hurry this morning," she starts, and he _almost _tells her about the way her hair is plastered to her forehead, but she looks cute, "so I didn't pack any pyjamas. Do you have any spares, Uchiha-sensei?"

"Sasuke," he corrects without thinking.

"Sasuke-sensei," Sakura repeats, with a giggle far too childish for their age. "So do you have any spares, or do I need to ask one of the girls?"

He considers it. Though Sakura is slight, she's definitely a woman in proportions, and any of their students' pyjamas would look nothing short of scandalous on her. And he admits there's a temptation to that, but…

"Sure," he says, "I've got a pair. Come round when I'm unpacked?"

She does, and even though Sakura was disorganised and late it seems she's smuggled contraband to camp in the form of her favourite cup sake.

"An offering," she greets him with, holding the cans invitingly in front of his door. There's something to be said for the luxury that is teacher's privilege - they've got rooms to themselves, and so he lets her in without fear of Naruto or Kakashi or Shikamaru-sensei barging in unannounced.

"You brought sake but not pyjamas?"

The question is out of his mouth before Sasuke considers whether it's appropriate or not, but instead of looking piqued Sakura grins at him. It brings colour to his cheeks.

"I've got pyjamas," Sakura admits roguishly.

"Then…"

"A good excuse to come into your room, wasn't it?"

She looks pleased with herself, sitting cross legged on his futon while Sasuke leans on the low wooden table.

"You're staring," she comments after a while, and he blinks black eyes because it's true.

"I'm a little shocked." He has always been honest to a fault.

Sakura throws her head back and laughs, and he watches the way her hair spreads across the thin sheets of his futon. They sit in silence while finishing their alcohol, listening to the muffled giggling of students from the dorms around them.

"You're a very forthright person, Sasuke-sensei," Sakura says eventually.

"Yeah?"

She nods. "I noticed it right away. That was some greeting you gave me, huh?"

He bites his lower lip before hiding his face in his hands. "Ah, I'm sorry-"

"Don't apologise," Sakura chides laughingly, "I'm direct too."

Sasuke is unconvinced, but Sakura simply slips another two cups of sake from her voluminous pockets and he's too impressed to voice his disbelief. Flicking open the metal top, she continues,

"It's true! After that incident, I spoke to Kakashi-sensei about you, and I asked him for your phone number."

Her words drift into his sake-fuelled consciousness for a second before they solidify into sense. He risks a peek at her through his splayed fingers. She winks raucously at him, though the blush on her face makes it adorable.

"He took too long, though, so I've had to take matters into my own hands, you see."

"Hn," Sasuke replies, lowering his hands. "I think you're more competent."

"Right? Tell me your phone number."

The abrupt question makes him blush again, and Sasuke feels the push and pull of their conversation swinging firmly into her favour. But he's always been competitive, and honest, and it's with both of these traits in mind that he leans forward on both elbows, drawing closer to the school nurse where she sits not-quite-primly on his unused futon.

"Sakura-sensei," he starts, slowly, watching the way she watches him move closer, "how about _you _tell _me _your phone number?"

* * *

**AN: **I got a lot of requests for a sequel to this. Maybe one day!


	10. Meeting Haruno-sensei

**AN: **This is an author / publisher AU as requested by vylkon over on tumblr. How close to home this hits! I'd like to say I'm more like Sasuke here but to be honest, I'm Sakura!

* * *

"Sasuke, I've got a proposition for you," Kakashi said, beckoning him over with a commanding finger.

As much as he wished, Sasuke couldn't exactly ignore his boss, and so he made his way past the precarious stacks of manuscripts and empty coffee cups, navigating the chaos that belonged to the chief editor of Leaf Publishing.

"What?" he huffed, watching as the gifted chief editor flicked through a clipboard with his glasses perched halfway down his nose.

"Mah, always so impatient, Sasuke… no wonder half our writers are frightened of you."

Sasuke heard the stifled chuckle from Naruto behind him, aborted only when he spun on his heel to give his colleague what the office privately liked to call the Uchiha _stare_.

"Anyway," Kakashi continued, obviously seeking to stave off the inevitable confrontation between two of his best editors, "We've signed a new author, and I'd like you to work with them."

"I'm already handling three right now, Kakashi, and Nara-sensei has delayed his book _again-_"

"Ah, about that," his boss interrupted, holding up a placating hand. "Don't worry - I'd really like this to be a fruitful partnership, so I've seen to it that other editors take over your workload. You can still meet your authors if you feel it's useful for their development, but…"

Kakashi clapped his hands together, looking up at his protege through the lenses of his glasses as they balanced on his nose. "I'd like this to be a one on one kind of deal."

Sasuke frowned deeply. That wasn't the Leaf method; writers were added to their publishing house as a kind of talent bank, working with an editor who managed several others at the same time. For this person to get special treatment, it had to be…

"Did you finally manage to onboard Jiraiya-sensei?" Sasuke queried, folding his arms. "I can't think of anyone else who'd get this attention."

"If it was Jiraiya," Kakashi said with a laugh, "I'd be working with him myself."

That was true. All the other literary greats of their age were firmly ensconced in rival publishing houses, and Jiraiya liked to roam between them as the mood took him, but there really wasn't anyone else Sasuke could think of that would merit a dedicated editor.

"It's Haruno-sensei's debut," Kakashi continued, "and I think we could really work together for a long time, all going well."

There was a sudden silence in the busy office; even the omnipresent typing halted as the other staff processed this announcement.

"You assigned _me_ to an _unknown _author?" Sasuke demanded, not caring if it sounded arrogant. It was rooted in truth; he was the second-best they had after Kakashi, who rarely took on individual projects any more.

"Read this," Kakashi said, handing him a manuscript and trying and failing to hold back a smug tone, "and then meet up with our newest author tomorrow. I've arranged for lunch at that place you all love."

No matter his thoughts on the matter Sasuke was, first and foremost, a great lover of books. So that night when he went home, he threw the paper onto his coffee table - somewhat unceremoniously in his sulk - and read.

And read. Then flicked through the pages one by one, his red editor's pen highlighting the sentences that stood out, that made him hold his breath, that made him grip the edges of the manuscript firmly. When he finished, the manuscript was a tapestry of stars and lines and exclamation marks; the words on the pages were simply that good. For a debut novel, for the _first draft _of a debut novel, it was a triumph. Though he couldn't help it, the editor felt the frissions of excitement that he got whenever he was about to meet a rising star: _Haruno-sensei must_, Sasuke thought as he finally fell into bed, _be a dignified, commanding presence, to write like that._

He'd built up this image in his head so much that by the time Sasuke swung open Ichiraku's painted red doors at lunch, he half expected to be greeted by a figure out of literary history. Of course, there was nobody like that, but then again, there was nobody else in the restaurant that fit his expectations either.

_They're late, _he thought, but it wasn't uncommon. Writers and creative types tended to play fast and loose with time demands - lunch meetings, deadlines; he'd seen it all before, and so Sasuke went to sit down in his usual seat before being waylaid by Teuchi, the proprietor.

"Uchiha-san," Teuchi called, "your 12pm is here: I've put them in the booth."

So many of the Leaf's meetings were done in Ichiraku that Sasuke was half-sure they were keeping the place open, hence the special treatment. With a nod, he continued on to the booth before being confronted with the back of a messy pink head of hair.

"Excuse me," Sasuke said, clearing his throat. Looking down, he could see that it belonged to an equally dishevelled woman, who was scribbling something down on the edge of a napkin, the ragged nails of her free hand tapping agitatedly against the formica table. Sasuke sighed; he didn't have time to chase someone out of the chair, and so he simply dropped into the seat opposite, waiting for the interloper to take notice of him.

Only she didn't. In fact, she didn't even look up from what she was doing; she was so hunched over the napkin that it seemed like she hadn't even sensed his presence, so Sasuke cleared his throat in irritation.

"Excuse me," he repeated, the edge of politeness leaving his tone, "I'm waiting for someone to arrive here."

Finally, the woman looked up and he was confronted by the most startlingly beautiful pair of green eyes he'd ever seen, set in a face that was currently frowning in abstract thought. She was around his age and completely disinterested; Sasuke blinked in surprise at the way she turned her eyebrows down at him, which was the opposite of the warm reception he normally elicited from his female peers.

"Oh," she said, sounding distracted, "me too. But they're late."

With that, she turned her head back to whatever she was writing. Half curious, half incredulous at the social faux pas, Sasuke leaned across the table to try and catch a glimpse of her notes, but the mystery woman clearly sensed _that_; with a start, she slammed her other palm down over the napkin, blocking it from his view.

"That's rude," she started, before doing a double take at the folder he'd dropped on the table as he sat down.

"What are you doing with my manuscript?" she asked, curiously, and Sasuke felt the bottom of his stomach lurch uncomfortably.

"You're… Haruno-sensei?"

She grinned unexpectedly, showing sparkling teeth at odds with her messy appearance. On closer inspection, Sasuke noticed that she wasn't actually _dirty; _merely dressed as though she'd run out of somewhere in a hurry, with not enough to time to run a comb through her hair.

"Not what you expected?" the author queried. "Neither are you, if you're the editor."

He nodded, dumbstruck, the image of a dignified older gentleman crumbling before his eyes.

"Well, you're certainly good looking," Haruno-sensei observed, "if a little pretentious."

Sasuke spluttered.

"I'm Haruno Sakura," she introduced, holding out a hand with a disarming smile, "and you must be…?"

"Uchiha Sasuke," he managed, taking her hand and watching as the ink stains on her fingers transferred to his palm.

"Shall we make this quick?" Sakura asked, gesturing for two bowls of ramen over her shoulder. "I have to get back to work."

"Work?" Sasuke repeated, still feeling as though this was some great joke at his expense. Regardless, he was going to kill Kakashi.

"Yes, I'm a nurse. I wrote that," she pointed to the manuscript where it was cradled securely in his folder, "on my lunch breaks."

He followed her gaze down to the masterpiece by his right, adorned as it was with his comments and general praise, and thought about this young woman hunched over a sandwich in a busy hospital, penning the best novel he'd read in years. When he looked back at her, Sakura was smiling with clear mirth at his expense, and he recalled how every person in her work had the tinge of real character, real experiences. _Of course, _Sasuke thought, steepling his fingers under his chin, _she's probably met them all. _

"Well," he eventually said, nodding at Teuchi as the man placed two bowls of ramen in front of them. "This should be interesting."

Trying to recover his poise, Sasuke smiled at his latest charge over the steaming bowl, watching as she tucked a strand of pink behind her ear.

It didn't last, because as soon as he took a mouthful of noodles, Sakura winked at him, causing Sasuke to choke.

"Oh yes," she laughed, passing him a napkin that _wasn't _covered with what was probably another masterpiece, "I definitely think so, too."

* * *

**AN: **Hotshot Editor Sasuke is love.

I hope you're enjoying this anthology! Would love to hear what you think.


	11. Sugar-Spun

**AN:** This is the longest out of the collection yet at very close to 2,000 words. Prompt was _aristocrat / commoner _AU, and I took it one step further and set it in the Taisho era of Japan (roughly 1912-1926).

Quick note: I get lovely comments from 99% of you, but please, please don't comment on this fic demanding I update some of my other works. I know you're anxious to see updates but it's kind of upsetting to see that, especially when I want to know your thoughts on this piece 3

* * *

It starts innocently enough. His mother likes her family's traditional sweets: his brother gets hooked, then his father admits partiality to the Haruno anmitsu recipe and that's it. The Uchiha family and all their followers become regulars, landing the humble sweet shop a new class of clientele in one fell swoop.

Sasuke doesn't even see the daughter of the house for the first few months of the arrangement. Like his brother he's aiming to get into Konoha's most prestigious university, and his days are spent studying, fending off his father's friends' daughters, and trying and failing to avoid the friendship of the only scion of the Uzumaki family.

So when he finally meets Haruno Sakura, he has no idea who she is: she's just another kimono-clad menace come to disturb his quiet contemplation of _The Tale of the Ninja _in the ceremonial garden.

"Excuse me, young master," she chirps, and he lifts the book from his face to send his patented glare in her direction, "could you show me the way to your kitchen? I'm afraid I'm lost…"

Sasuke _tuts_ under his breath, pulling himself up into a seated position. It must be a new trick of his mother, to send a girl directly to him. Too bad for the noble Uchiha Mikoto that Sasuke has inherited his father's stubborn streak.

"And you're bothering me because…?"

She tilts her rosy head at his rudeness, clutching the wooden barrel held in her hands tighter.

"Because I believe you'll know the way?"

This mysterious girl speaks with the politeness proper to his situation, but there's a tinge of impertinence that reminds him of Naruto, so he folds his arms and tucks his book into his pocket, standing up to show her the way. She walks beside him, which takes Sasuke off guard: most of the young heiresses he knows - which are the sum total of the young _women _he knows - take a respectful stance one pace behind him, but this interloper strides confidently by his side, smiling at him over the covered barrel in her arms.

"What's in that?" Sasuke asks, once they're halfway across the tree-strewn lawn and she still hasn't spoken.

"It's some fresh dango, for your honourable mother," the girl replies, and he blinks black eyes in surprise.

"How do you know who my mother is?"

She smiles like it's obvious, and perhaps it is, because Sasuke knows he's the spitting image of the Uchiha matriarch.

"And who are you?" he continues, thrown a little off balance because of her shimmering pink hair, forest eyes and smile just this side of sassiness.

"I'm Haruno Sakura," the girl introduces herself, bowing over her family's produce. "Would you like to try one? I packed an extra stick for a snack."

"Hn," Sasuke acquiesces, though he doesn't like sweet things. There's a moment of shuffling before she passes him a gently-steaming stick of dango with her bare hands, fingers which he notices have the rough calluses of a working girl. This 'Sakura' is very different from the proper young ladies his mother makes him sit through lunches with; though she smiles often, she hasn't giggled once, and when she picks up the barrel of sweets he sees the strength hidden behind the practical cotton of her kimono.

He bites down just before they reach the back door to the estate's kitchen, a bustling workspace Sasuke tends to avoid. It's obvious Sakura recognises where they are now, if the way she's looking around is any indication, so he turns to go.

"Wait!" she calls, the first departure from polite speech she's made.

He spins on his geta-clad heel, student's cape flowing behind him as he waits to hear why she's dared to break the iron rules of social hierarchy.

"What do you think?" Sakura asks with a merchant's smile, nodding to the half-bitten dango in his grasp.

"It's… good," Sasuke admits reluctantly, watching as her expression turns more genuine. "Not too sweet."

"Then I'll bring some extra for you, in the next delivery."

Sasuke doesn't say yes, but he doesn't say no either, and the next time the Haruno daughter appears with his mother's treats, the youngest son of the Uchiha house makes sure to wait by the kitchen doorway.

* * *

"My father's father was a _daimyo_," Sasuke says randomly one day, "and my mother's mother is the Emperor's distant cousin."

Sakura looks at him askance before continuing to unpack the delicate tea-ceremony sweets her father has made. Her house has been working for his for just under a year, now, and her pink hair is a familiar sight in the kitchen. He waits for her under the stout roof of the closest pagoda when she makes her deliveries, and they'll sit together, leaning against the wood, trading conversation and treats while the estate bustles around them.

"That's nice," she says noncommittally. "My mother and father ran away together, so I don't know who their parents are."

She turns to him with hands clasped to her chest, a wistful smile on her face. "Isn't that romantic?"

"It's foolish," he retorts, reaching over to pluck a matcha-flavoured treat from the tray. "How did they expect to survive with nothing?"

"Sasuke-kun," Sakura chides, but he's faster than her and deposits the treat into his mouth before she can snatch it back, "you're being cruel again. And you've ruined my display!"

The pet-name slips from her mouth when she's not thinking, but Sasuke never draws attention to it; if pressed, he'd even admit to secretly wanting to hear her say _Sasuke-kun_ all the time. Over the last year they've developed an easy friendship that starts and stops at the threshold to his estate, a comfortable relationship that flaunts the boundaries of what both of them know to be appropriate.

Amidst the increasing marriage proposals heading his way, Sasuke finds it as refreshing as his ancient rivalry with Naruto.

"Your brother," Sakura suddenly whispers, and he leans in close because Itachi is a forbidden topic in the Uchiha household right now, "_he _ran away. Is that foolish?"

Sasuke looks down at his fingers, covered as they are in the fine sugar dust from Sakura's family's pride. Itachi's departure has the entirety of Konoha's aristocracy in an uproar, the future head of one of the city's oldest families declaring his defection to move abroad and pursue his artistic dreams. It's left Sasuke in a difficult position; he's the only one able to uphold his own family's pride, now.

"Yes," Sasuke whispers back, "but I don't resent him for it."

Sakura's smile softens like it does when he says something kind.

"Someday, I hope I love someone as much as you love him," she murmurs, turning back to her work. And though they're given a fair amount of privacy - Sasuke's presence tends to scare away most of the kitchen staff in the quiet afternoons when she arrives - there's still too much risk of being overheard by gossiping maids.

"You'll have to marry someone with an incredible sweet tooth," Sasuke dismisses, and he doesn't say it, but _that person won't be me _is implied in his imperious tone.

It is not quite what he wants to say.

"Right?" Sakura agrees, and there's a sadness there, but he doesn't want to look at it too closely. "It'll have to be some poor, lonely boy with no family of his own."

Sasuke forgets sometimes that although their worlds are vastly different, Sakura is also the heiress to her family's prospering business.

_It can't be you_, she doesn't say, but green eyes meet black and they both know what's being said: the truth behind the sugar-spun, empty words.

* * *

Sakura is eighteen, and he's twenty, and he's been accepted into university and his mother's apron strings have finally been cut when Sakura comes and says,

"Mother and father want me to marry Sai."

Sasuke drops the dango she'd given him, and they watch as the rich syrup coats the grass of the ceremonial garden.

"My poor, lonely boy with no family," she continues, stooping from her seat to pick up the ruined treat. "He finally appeared."

These days, Sakura's hands don't look so worn; the Uchiha patronage and subsequent popularity among the rich means that her father's shop is now two, three, four eateries, serving the richest and the poorest of the city with equal care. Where Sakura used to make the mochi, they have servants instead, and her insistence that she still delivers the Uchiha's personal order is nothing but headstrong.

She is still far, far below Sasuke's status.

"Ah," Sasuke manages. He's met Sai a few times, an orphan boy that Sakura's father picked up through loyalty to a dead friend. He's a good man, if a little strange, and Sakura tolerates him well enough.

So he shouldn't interfere, but-

"Don't marry him."

Sakura gapes, her green eyes wide as the words leave his mouth before he can stop them. It's against the rules of their relationship, to state such absolutes. Then her face crumples, and he watches as smooth hands come up to cover her face, the first hint of tears leaking through slender fingers.

"I don't want to," she admits, "but it's not like I could marry-"

She cuts herself off, but Sasuke knows what she was going to say, because it's true. It's not like she could marry _him_, the sole heir to the Uchiha family name, the youngest scion to grace the family that stands at the forefront of their society.

"Regardless, I'm going to accept," Sakura's trying not to cry as she states her decision, and Sasuke feels the back of his throat close up in what feels very much like despair. "So we can be like this for a little longer, and then you'll have to be 'young master', even though you're not so young any more."

Sasuke closes his eyes. "Sakura-"

"Haruno-san," she corrects, sounding as sad as he's ever heard her.

"Dango-thief," Sasuke retorts, and his companion stops hiding her face to drum her fists against his chest. Though she doesn't work in the kitchen any more, Sakura still has strength unseen in the delicate ladies of the nobility, and her hits actually hurt, but Sasuke lets her land them all.

"Sakura," he repeats, halting her movements when they start to slow. "You'll marry Sai, and I'll marry someone my mother chooses, but you should know…"

He trails off, and tells her with his eyes instead. But Sasuke wants to makes sure Sakura knows, really _knows _what he wants to convey, so he dips his finger in the pretty anmitsu arranged in her basket, and raises the syrup to her lips.

"You've ruined your father's dessert," she scolds, but it's without malice, and Sasuke notices the brush of her lips against the pad of his fingers more than anything he's ever felt before.

"It won't be the first time I've disappointed him," he whispers back, pressing harder against lips that are reddening with the pressure of his touch.

"Sasuke-kun," Sakura murmurs, and the curve of her speech loops around the cage of propriety, winds its way to his chest until he finds himself leaning into her side.

"Don't marry anyone else," he says, and it's almost, almost a promise.

He feels her smile against his touch.

"I won't," she vows, and Sasuke thinks, _where is my brother, what could I say to my mother, how badly will my father hate me, _but then Sakura closes her eyes and leans in to him to seal the deal, and all he can taste is the sugary sweet promise of her lips.

* * *

**AN:** Oh I just love this time period so much. And I'm a sucker for ending on a kiss if you can't tell.


	12. The Bathhouse

**AN: **Hello! This time the prompt was requested by isananna over on tumblr. She has a wonderful SasuSaku story called Fealty and Fidelity over on A03, which I recommend you check out.

Prompt was: Neighbour AU + Everybody Knows / Mistaken for Couple, so I had to base it in a Japanese University setting. It's a little based on my naive husband, bless him.

* * *

It's purely for convenience. Or so Sasuke tells himself, as he watches his neighbour close her door and turn to him with a smile just short of blinding.

"Thanks for waiting, Sasuke-kun," she chirps, and he nods his head in lieu of answering something ridiculous like _anytime _or _I'd wait anywhere for you_.

The bathhouse isn't far from their shabby apartments: it's one of the reasons why he'd chosen the place, but it's certainly far enough for Sakura to walk to on her own, especially as she insists on bathing late at night. And like most student housing, it's not in the nicest part of Konoha. They meet three times a week - four in summer - and walk each other to and from the baths, waiting for the other outside with a hot drink or an ice cream depending on the season.

It's the extent of their relationship as they're in different courses, but it suits them just fine.

"How is studying going?" Sakura asks, her steps eager to reach the promise of hot water.

"Hn…" he considers, watching as she skips along the side of the road. It's easy to mistake her for younger than her twenty years; his neighbour has a cheerful, lighthearted air and appearance that speaks of highschool naivete. "I'm struggling with Chemistry."

She looks over her shoulder at him, bathing bag swinging with the wideness of her movement. "Oh, you're taking Chemistry? That's unusual."

It is: he's studying Law, and she's studying Medicine, but his brother recommended the subject as a precursor to Forensics and so he'd jumped on the chance. Only; he hadn't anticipated just how much his skills for science had slipped in the year since leaving high school.

"I can help you with it, if you like?" she continues, and Sasuke agrees before he's processed what she said.

Oh. It's the first overture of friendship beyond their trips to the bathhouse and he's halfway to changing his mind when her smile dials up a notch and she starts humming under her breath. Clearly, she _wants_ to help him study, and Sasuke's not selfless enough to turn down something like that.

"Thanks," he says instead, and spends the whole soak in the bath thinking about the way the curve of her cheeks looked as she gave him a glimpse of her dimples.

He beats her out of the bath; it's fifty-fifty who wins, a silly game they've played for almost a year now, and Sasuke mutters under his breath as he buys their ice cream from the bathhouse worker while he waits for her to finish up.

"Your girlfriend is a beauty, bro," the man behind the counter remarks, and Sasuke vaguely recognises him as going to their university. He looks roguish, with tousled brown hair and pointed teeth and tanned skin, so Sasuke doesn't bother correcting him, simply nodding in response and collecting his change.

At least, that's _one _of the reasons he doesn't correct the worker; Sakura would likely be charmed by his smile, and he definitely looks like the kind of guy who kisses and tells. Sasuke's almost convinced himself it's for honorable reasons by the time she meets him outside, hair sparkling with water and skin flushed from her bathing.

"Your hair's wet," he comments, lifting her towel from around her neck and scrubbing her hair. The exchange is normally the other way round; he feels redness steal across his cheeks at the realisation he's just initiated contact with her for the first time. Because he's focused on drying her hair, he misses the way her cheeks light up, too.

"What flavours did you get?" Sakura asks from under her towel, and he stops messing up her hair to reach into his bag and pull out the choices.

Predictably, she goes for strawberry - just as reliably as he opts for the coffee flavour - and they walk back to their apartment in companionable silence, waving to the neighbourhood wives who smile indulgently at them as they pass.

As they reach the scrubby garden in front of their six-tatami rooms, the red-haired landlady greets them with a pleasant smile on her face, but it's the look of a meddling housewife and Sasuke goes to take the steps two at a time. Uzumaki Kushina's conversation can be worryingly pointed, and the comment from earlier already has him in a state of alert.

"Good night, you two!" Kushina calls, and winks at Sasuke. He's noticed increasingly that he and Sakura are paired up in people's conversations; the local housewives gossip at young love, their landlady makes as many references to them together as she can, and now the bathhouse staff - Kiba, he remembers suddenly - puts it into blunt terms.

Glancing back at Sakura as he walks down the corridor to their rooms, she gives him a smile that's slightly marred by strawberry icecream, causing all manner of inappropriate thoughts to flicker across the student's mind. His door comes up first, and as he's opening his mouth to say goodnight, Sakura beats him to it.

"Shall I grab my textbooks, or do you have enough materials to get started?"

The question throws him, and his confusion must show on his face because she clarifies,

"For Chemistry help."

"Ah." Sasuke feels a little stupid; Sakura's standing with an expectant look on her face, outside his half-open door with her bathing stuff still tucked under her arm. "You mean, tonight?"

Sakura smiles encouragingly, shifting her burden to her other side.

He clears his throat, hedging delicately about the time of night, but Sakura dismisses it with a wave of her hand.

"It's not late for me; I study for another hour or so after we go to the bathhouse." She fixes him with a look and follows him as he crosses his threshold in somewhat of a daze. "And I can hear you studying too, so it's fine. Right?"

It's not fine, he wants to tell her, because it's pretty late at night and they're just out of the bath and she smells good and she's following a young man into his room-

His thoughts are halted when Sakura slips off her trainers and looks around his modest room, taking in the simple decor and touches of personality he's acquired over his tenancy. The sight of Sakura standing innocently in his room makes Sasuke want to cough violently. He puts the table between them, and the textbooks, opening the page and erecting it as a kind of barrier instead of doing something crazy like pushing her down on the unrolled futon in the corner.

Sasuke misses the way Sakura's green eyes dart towards it before turning to teach him with her easygoing smile. And misses the way that she edges around the table while they're going over his work, until they're an hour and a half in and he feels a small hand rest on the curve of his bare elbow.

"Sasuke-kun," she whispers, and he starts out of his studying reverie to feel her sitting very, very close. "It's getting late."

Her hand on his arm is warm; he feels the heat of his neighbour as she sits next to him, making him swallow with a throat suddenly dry.

"Ah," he manages, "if you want to go…"

Sakura shakes her head, now-dry pink hair curling around her cheeks. "I don't," she murmurs, and sits a touch closer. "I came over to yours late at night…"

He gets it. Haruno Sakura wasn't naive, but _he _might be, Sasuke thinks, looking back on months of bathhouse trips and subtle smiles and comments from just about everyone who saw them together. And he wants to ask her how long they've been almost-dating, but she leans in, questioningly, and it's with the smell of their shared shampoo in his senses that Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura finally seal the deal.

* * *

**AN:** Naive!Sauce is just... too cute. Let me know what you thought!


	13. Rendezvous

**AN: **Hello again! This time the prompt was for a Florist / Bookshop AU, with the twist that the person who worked in the florist was new and didn't know much about flowers, and the person who worked in the bookshop was so well read that they did. I really loved writing this!

* * *

It was supposed to be a relaxing job. A simple, back-to-nature gig with her childhood best friend in her hometown, away from the make it or break it that had been Sakura's corporate life for the last five years.

Working as a florist was anything _but _relaxing. And though she was sure she'd never go back to spreadsheets and meetings about meetings, Sakura felt rather overwhelmed by the sheer breadth of skill required to make it in her new line of work. At least she was finally competent enough after a fortnight that Ino could have a lunch break: it had doused her righteous fire when Ino had claimed she was too green for the greenery.

"Stick to the counter, Forehead," the blonde said, not unkindly, and so stick to it like a burr Sakura had.

Hand on her chin, the pink-haired apprentice leaned on the polished wood of Yamanaka Flowers' counter, admiring the fresh flowers she'd placed in their jars that morning. The shop was on the luxe end of artistry, exotic blooms placed strategically in jars where patrons could wander around and choose their bouquets with purpose, or simply leave it up to Ino's famous recommendations and pick a ready-made bunch. It was a far cry from the homey little shop Sakura had known in their school days, but she loved the place all the same.

Lost in thought, she missed the tinkling of the bell above the door, not realising there was a customer in the shop until he'd stood directly in front of the counter for an embarrassingly long time.

"Excuse me," a deep male voice said, "I'm looking for two bouquets."

His voice was delicious enough, but it was the man's face that made Sakura's elbow slide off the counter, causing her to bite her tongue as she slipped.

"Oh, _thit_," she wailed, and then blushed crimson as he raised a dark eyebrow at her. He was the kind of customer she and Ino had dreamed about coming to sweep them off their feet in their teens: aristocratic good looks, expensive clothes, black mussed-up hair and a hint of rebelliousness in his pierced ear.

Gorgeous, but still: she hadn't expected to make _quite _such a fool of herself after years in the city.

"Sorry," she started again, raising herself to her full height and lamenting that it was still far below his, "how can I help you?"

"I need flowers," he repeated.

So he was choosing to ignore her blunder; Sakura breathed a sigh of relief before paling again at the request. She had no idea how to put a bouquet together and since he hadn't picked up any from the ready-made selection, it looked like the handsome stranger wanted her to make something specific.

"Ah, uh… I'm so sorry, the florist is actually away for lunch at the moment. Would you like to come back in a while?"

He frowned at her before looking down at his watch. "I can't leave the shop too long," he said, and Sakura realised he must be the owner of the new bookshop that had recently opened in the next street. Viva la small town rumours: she'd heard talk he was handsome but it was _grossly _underestimated. "I'll just pick some. I don't really care if they're arranged."

That was a demand, then. Sakura smiled nervously at him before extending a hand towards the blooms. However, he was already reeling off a few flower names, making no move to get them himself.

She recognised the first few - yellow chrysanthemum, blue anemones - but he quickly veered into territory that Sakura hadn't quite conquered yet, and so she simply stood miserably until he trailed off, looking confused.

"You don't know what the flowers are called?" he queried, sounding disbelieving.

"I'm… quite new," Sakura admitted. "I'm very sorry."

"Hn," he muttered, and she didn't know if that was good or bad, but he did pick up her spare pair of gloves off the table, walking to pick out what he'd requested. It didn't take him long at all; soon there was a sizeable pile of flowers on the counter, which he'd even neatly divided into two bundles.

"Ah… since you did all the work yourself, I'll give you a discount," Sakura mumbled, tying them together and wrapping the flowers with Ino's second-best paper. She'd take it out of her own pocket to save the humiliation.

"It's fine," he rebutted, placing down a crisp note.

She nodded, miserable, and wondered what she'd done to deserve messing up a meeting with a beautiful stranger like this. He turned to walk out, bundles cradled in one arm, and then threw her off completely by asking-

"What time do you finish?"

_What? _"Uh… six."

The man nodded. "I'm still open then. Come via Uchiha Books, next to the teashop - I've got books on botany and flowers."

Because _of course _he wasn't asking her out. Sakura simply stared after him as he left, and spent the rest of the day in such agonies of whether or not to go that Ino sent her off early, thinking she had a cold.

She goes. It would be rude not to, Sakura supposed, and the neighbourhood is small enough that bad blood between businesses would cause all sorts of headaches. That was what she told herself, anyway, and by the time she opened the door to his bookshop the florist almost believed it.

"Um," she said into the quiet. The store looks nothing like any bookshop she'd ever seen: it's light and airy and stacked with tomes in a way that's not overwhelming. The fateful flowers from earlier are placed tactfully on the windowsill and desk, behind which the proprietor sat, sorting through a small pile of books.

He acknowledges her with a look, setting aside a book which she can see is printed with a flower on the cover.

"You're early," he observed, and for some reason it makes Sakura feel like she's on a first date.

"Y-yes - is that alright?"

He shrugs, standing up and coming around the desk, hand outstretched.

"Uchiha Sasuke," he introduced, and when Sakura took his hand she was glad she'd washed off the dirt from the shop before coming round.

"Haruno Sakura," she said, watching his eyebrows rise in surprise. "With a name like that, you'd expect me to know a little more about flowers, right?"

Sasuke smiled, just a touch, and she can tell she'd read his mind. He didn't say anything, just held out a hand towards the small pile accumulating on his desk.

"These are just the basics," he started. "Names of flowers, some basic botany, traditional floral meanings: that kind of thing."

It didn't look like an imposing pile to start with, and it was certainly better than listening to Ino's distracted rambling as they prepped for the day. Yes: if there was one thing Sakura was good at it was taking in new information. And she really, truly wanted to be able to make beautiful bouquets full of meaning for people.

"I'll take them," she said decisively. "How much do I owe you?"

There was a moment of silence as the bookseller deliberated, and she tried not to shift from foot to foot in anticipation. She'd given up her corporate job and money wasn't quite what it used to-

"How about," he suggested slowly, "you bring me the results of your practice?"

Sakura blinked green eyes, surprised. "You mean, flowers I've put together?"

Sasuke tilted his head to the side questioningly. "Twice a week, I think."

So she'd be popping round to rendezvous in Uchiha Books twice a week with the handsome stranger; it _did_ sound appealing. And from the slowly spreading smirk across her new acquaintance's face, Sakura thought that was, rather, the point.

* * *

**AN: **P.S... I think that's me almost completely caught up with the AU's I've written recently, so there might be more of a delay between chapters as I work on prompts. Let me know what you think! This was inspired by the small neighbourhoods of Kyoto. I could never get away from the gossip!


	14. Straight to Dirty Places

**AN: **This prompt was for Roommates AU + I Didn't Mean To Turn You On. I took this and had fun with it! A little suggestive, but nothing explicit.

* * *

Things Sasuke likes about his roommate: she is tidier than Naruto, she sometimes makes breakfast and she always makes tea, and she prefers to read instead of listening to loud music.

Things Sasuke doesn't like to admit he likes about his roommate: Sakura has the unfortunate habit of not wearing nearly enough clothes when she lounges around the house.

It's as he arrives home after a long day at university that Sasuke walks into yet another sartorial scandal.

"Evening, Sasuke-kun!" Sakura calls from the kitchen, and it's late enough that the lights should be on, but they aren't, and it's only by this unfortunate accident that he walks in without preparing himself.

"Hel-" his return greeting is bitten off at the sight of Sakura bent double, arms deep in the freezer and her rear directly in his line of vision. Which would be a tempting enough sight except Sasuke is convinced that Sakura's shorts fall firmly into the underwear category. "Unh."

If she notices his choked greeting, Sakura doesn't say anything, and Sasuke has to forcefully close his eyes against the image of her pale thighs disappearing under paper-thin pink silk.

He has enough sense to slide behind the counter before she straightens, throwing him her perfect smile as she brandishes the treasure; a carton of ice cream they must've forgotten about in previous explorations.

"Look at what I found," she says, sounded far too delighted, and he's able to purse his lips and nod when she asks if he wants a bowl.

"I'll eat it in my room," he replies, holding a hand out, but Sakura frowns prettily.

"It's Friday!" she admonishes. It's one of the few things Sasuke _dislikes _about living with Sakura: her insistence that Friday is a day of socialisation. Weekends don't mean much to a pair of working students; and he is half tempted to make a break for it only his… problematic reaction to her bare legs would definitely give him away if he ran.

"I finished my book… I know you've been wanting the second volume," Sakura coaxes, and she has him there; because Sakura's idea of socialising with someone is either partying all night or sitting quietly with a book, nothing in-between.

"Fine," he huffs, not truly displeased, and when Sasuke makes sure to walk behind her and sit on the other side of the couch (definitely not with a pillow in his lap) he feels he's made it out unscathed until,

"Could I steal your hoodie? I'm a little cold."

Sasuke _knows _he would refuse just about anyone else in the world if they asked such a question, but he's already halfway out of the jumper when Sakura smiles and shifts towards him to take the offering. He sees it right before it happens: Sakura's elbow catches the icecream balanced precariously on her knees and the bowl tips before he can grab it, depositing the melting dessert across her thighs in a mess that immediately makes his mind go to dirty places.

_Other _parts of him immediately go to dirty places, too, and Sasuke feels enough embarrassment to last ten years when he's caught half out of his hoodie, his security cushion on the floor and his reaction to her icecream-covered state prominently making itself known against his jeans.

"Ah," she says, eyes immediately drawn to the obvious, just as his are unable to tear themselves away from the icecream melting on the pale skin of her thigh.

"Uh," he replies, trying to look away and finish taking off his jumper and restore his dignity all at once and managing none of them.

"I-," Sakura starts, and she tries to wipe off the icecream with his sleeve and Sasuke knows he _should _be annoyed - it's not a cheap hoodie - but there's very little in the way of reasoning making its way to the forefront of his brain and he feels every inch the awkward student that he is. "I didn't mean to turn you on."

"You didn't," he immediately asserts, and then watches her eyebrows raise in disbelief before Sakura blushes at the ridiculousness of the situation.

"Fine, then, I'm not sorry if I've nothing to be sorry for."

Her temper is legendary, even if she rarely exerts it on him.

"Don't be," Sasuke whispers before his reason catches up with his impulse. "Sorry about it, I mean."

_Keep digging, _a voice tells him right before the blush that's been threatening since he watched Sakura bend over the freezer finally blossoms. He's not quite sure what he's implying by the comment but clearly Sakura has a better idea, if the way she's shifted to kneel beside him on the couch means anything.

"Why?" she asks anyway, and Sasuke wonders if it's too late to open the door and run away, because being this close to his roommate as she paws at her thighs to get rid of the stickiness is a special kind of torture.

Opening his mouth before closing it again in confusion, Sasuke watches helplessly as Sakura's muscled thighs edge closer until her knees are against his hipbone.

"Why shouldn't I be sorry, Sasuke-kun?" and it's a scene right out of his guiltiest dreams when Sakura continues, "did you want me to turn you on?"

"No," Sasuke says and her mouth turns down into a frown that's more of a disappointed pout, "but you do anyway."

Feeling absolutely daring - although not without encouragement, if Sakura's cheshire grin can be trusted - he puts a hand on her bare knee, barely suppressing a shudder at the softness of the skin below his palm.

"This is a terrible idea," he mutters even as he leans into her, twisting so his knees are touching hers.

"I don't know," Sakura murmurs, ghosting past his cheek to wrap her hands around the back of his neck. "We've been practically dating for months, now."

"We have?" Sasuke questions. Thinking about it as her hand curls into the dark hair at his nape, he concedes that it's probably true: in the half-year since he moved in with Sakura he's been on precisely one date and the rest of the time has been with his pink-haired housemate.

They eat together, go out on adventures together, study together; one of the things he likes most about his roommate is that she operates on the same pace as his busy schedule. Truthfully, the only thing they don't do together is…

Sasuke doesn't realise he's been speaking out loud until Sakura mouths his words back to him.

"I'm sure we could sort that out," she offers, playful, and he's impressed with her flexibility when she slides into his lap with a movement so smooth his body doesn't register it until it _does_.

"Your thighs are sticky," Sasuke complains, his hands squarely on the territory that had been torturing him since he opened the door.

"I'm sure we could sort _that_ out, too," Sakura says with a wink, and then ruins it (makes it better) when she breaks out into peals of laughter, closing the distance between them and pressing sticky-sweet lips to his.

* * *

**AN: **Sasuke I'm sorry lmao


	15. Meeting Sasuke-sensei

**AN: **Hi lovelies! Enjoying Sasusaku month? The prompt this time could be considered the reverse of the other author / publisher work in this anthology, 'Meeting Haruno-sensei'. I started with this one, got stuck, and then came back to finish it after feeling inspired.

Please be aware there's some hints of Charasuke here... you'll see what I mean!

* * *

"Sasuke-sensei, this is your new editor, Haruno Sakura-san," Kakashi says, and Sakura watches as the author in question doesn't even lift his eyes from the desk to greet her properly.

"Hn," he replies, and in that single syllable is all the dislike she knows he feels for the situation.

Kakashi has already briefed her on the uniqueness of Sasuke's artistic temper, how he's managed to successfully drive away several of Leaf Publisher's more experienced editors. There's a bet in the office that Sakura will last no more than three days. She has herself down for a full week, but one look at Sasuke's brooding, handsome, _displeased_ features makes her think _maybe I'll make two days at best_.

She smiles brightly at the the bridge of his nose before introducing herself as a newbie, ready to help him with whatever he needs. His answering sigh echoes awkwardly around the meeting room, and Kakashi tries not to fiddle too obviously with Sasuke's latest novel while they sit in silence. Sakura knows the publisher cannot afford to lose him: arrogant and difficult though he may be, Uchiha Sasuke is a household name for a reason. He's just _that _good.

So she grits her teeth, works around his blunt rudeness, and makes plans to visit for a script reading sometime in the next few days.

Next week comes with a motivational cheer from her colleagues, a thinly-veiled threat from Kakashi and a courtesy taxi to the Uchiha estate. Sakura thinks _wait, nobody told me he's practically nobility _before she's greeted at the doorway by an unsmiling old man who shows her into the main building.

It's… empty. The house is built in the traditional Fire style, with sliding wooden doors and creaking floors that speak of feet who no longer tread their boards, a place gutted and left to stand alone. All at once Sakura understands the setting of many of Sasuke-sensei's novels; bleak, forgotten spaces that still think about the time they were loved.

"In here, please," the man - who must be a servant - commands with clear distaste, as though she's someone who wandered in from the street. But he was there to open the gateway for her, and Sakura wonders whether Sasuke told him to expect a visit.

She sits and waits. And waits. And it's almost two hours before her patience wanes, her tea gone cold and no sign of the wayward author. Taking a deep breath, Sakura steels her nerves and slips through the paper door to roam the corridors beyond. Moving with purpose, her righteous anger finds a target in the discordant sound of typing from a room at the very heart of the house.

Sakura nearly calls out, but something about the sound: the furiosity, the intensity makes her hold her tongue and peer through the small gap in the door. And she is glad of her hesitance, because the sight of Sasuke hunched over his desk, hair in disarray and his hands moving in a desperate dance over his keyboard screams to her of genius at work.

_Maybe_, she thinks, ashamed, _I should've read his novels_. It was an unforgivable sin for an editor but she'd been so wrapped up in his rudeness that Sakura had been content to think he was a jumped-up, pompous young auteur. Now, watching him through the gap in the door to his office, she realises that he's probably so wrapped up in the world of his work that he's not _always _rude on purpose.

"You can come in," a low voice utters, and she squeaks in surprise to realise it's him, "I'm finished."

"Um," Sakura says, feeling like she's intruding, "are you sure?"

Sasuke-sensei levels her with a blunt look, and she realises it's the first time he's made eye contact with her at the same time as she realises that he might have the most beautiful eyes she's ever seen. Crossing the threshold with trepidation - her previous righteous pique extinguished - Sakura takes a prim seat across from his desk, kneeling on the crisp tatami and watching as he reaches behind him for a sheaf of neatly-printed paper. Sasuke is wearing a kimono, and even though she'd just seen him typing Sakura half-expected him to give her a handwritten manuscript like the authors of old.

It's the house, she thinks, reaching out to take his offering with a cautious hand. His fingers brush hers and of course, _of course _she reddens like a ripe tomato.

For some reason, he smirks.

"I waited for two hours, you know, sensei," Sakura admonishes, and then has to draw her eyes away from him helplessly as he stretches with the languor of deep work.

"That's about an hour and a half longer than the last editor," he replies, and she frowns.

"Did you do it on purpose?" she wants to know. If he did, then her previous generous assumption about his passion for work can take a running jump. As can he, but before Sakura can get too worked up he's shaking his head at her and reaching behind him to where she spies a small mini-fridge, incongruous with the traditional setup of his office.

"I didn't," he claimed. "Wasn't Suzuki-san there to let you in?"

"Yes, but…"

Well, she _had _thought the old man had known to expect her. "Why didn't he tell me you were working?"

Sasuke shrugs, passing her a bottle of ice-cool water. It's certainly more appealing than the cold tea back in the receiving room, and she accepts it with thanks.

"He stays out of my way," Sasuke offers, and Sakura thinks she understands. He'd looked like a demon possessed, a conduit for the words that had been pouring onto the page. The script in her hands suddenly feels like something she _needs _to read, right now. But before she can open her mouth to start the overdue meeting Sasuke questions,

"Have you read any of my work?"

Her face gives her away.

"Hmm," he says, contemplative, and Sakura can't tell if that's good or bad because he's already launched into a discussion of the contents of what she's currently holding, sounding to her surprise very much like a normal author. Or as normal as they ever are; writers were, she'd discovered, a singularly strange breed.

Soon, she's bundled back up and ready to go, and Sakura's a little charmed when Sasuke follows her to the door, treading the boards of his lonely house and looking like one of the ghosts that must live in the rarely-visited rooms.

"Same time next week?" Sakura says, hopeful. She really needs him to agree to her as an editor. There's a moment where he looks like he might refuse, and Sakura grips her book bag tighter, but he inclines his head and she can't help the sigh of relief that escapes her.

"Here," he says, dropping a book into her open bag, the movement concealing the title. "It's one of mine. Read it."

All Sakura trusts herself to do is nod. And when she's safely back in the office and away from Uchiha Sasuke's far-too-pretty eyes and ridiculously beautiful face and overwhelming presence the editor is able to take a deep breath, steeling herself for a new reading experience. Reaching into her bag, she pulls out what is most definitely a piece of utterly pornographic literature, and is most definitely _not _(she hopes) written by one Uchiha Sasuke.

Kakashi's howling laughter follows her all the way through to next week, though he refuses to tell her what's so funny. Armed this time with the payouts of her colleagues - nobody had bet on a second week - and another courtesy taxi, Sakura doesn't wait for Suzuki to let her in, storming straight to Sasuke's office.

He's not there.

"Sensei!" she calls, and her voice disturbs the pensive quiet of the Uchiha Estate. "Sasuke-sensei!"

Suzuki's shocked face appears around a corner, but before he can tell her off the door to the receiving room - last week's scene of patience - slides open and Sasuke leans on the doorway with an innocence she _knows _he doesn't deserve.

"This book!" she yells, brandishing last week's joke. Suzuki has, Sakura observes in the corner of her attention not occupied with the way Sasuke's eyes follow her, disappeared with the efficiency of a lifetime servant. "It's obscene, it's- I can't believe you gave me this."

She reaches him, noticing with discomfort that the author hasn't moved aside.

"Did you read it?" Sasuke asks.

She had. Provocative cover aside the novel had been very, _very _good, the kind of book to take into one's bunk, stirring up the kind of feelings Sakura had always tried hard to suppress.

"No." It's a barefaced lie and Sasuke knows it, if his slight smirk is anything to go by.

"I wrote it," he says, and Sakura's confused because it wasn't his name on the cover, it was-

Ah. It makes sense; the author's pseudonym is an alternative way of reading Sasuke's name and now that she thinks about it, really thinks, there were similarities to the new manuscript she's come to discuss.

"Alright, I did read it," she admits, and Sasuke finally steps back, revealing the beautiful lunch spread across the table. It's far more hospitable than her last visit and she spots some of her favourite dishes; it's a meal far out of the reach of her junior editor's salary. Mouth agape, Sakura can only sit down at the low table, her bag sliding thoughtlessly from her shoulder to thud to the floor, weighed down with Sasuke's words.

"What did you think of the characters?" he asks, and although she's in real danger of being utterly placated with the food Sakura manages to scrounge up a true frown.

"It was a dirty book," Sakura says. "I didn't think much of the characters."

In truth, she'd thought, just a little, that the main character was like herself: a young woman fresh out of education, lost and adrift and if she admitted to herself looking for someone to share all the confusion with. Aside from all the gratuitous _soul searching_, of course, Sakura identified with the heroine very much.

"Didn't you?" Sasuke questions, once more the picture of innocence. "I thought it would remind you of yourself."

She nearly chokes on the dango. If he was saying that... the very first person the heroine had had her way with was a young man, the same age, stuck in a similar situation but for his stubbornness. Sasuke was her age. And she didn't know much about his circumstances, but it felt close to a proposition.

With Sasuke watching her, chin propped on his hand as he ate a perfectly-prepared onigiri, Sakura wasn't sure if she could think straight enough not to say something ridiculous.

So when she _meant _to say, 'that's a little appropriate, don't you think, sensei?' what actually exited Sakura's traitor mouth was,

"Do you sleep with all your editors, Sasuke-sensei?"

There wasn't enough cold water in the world to calm her raging blush when the author leaned forward over the table, close enough that she could see the individual lashes as his eyes traced her face.

"I don't know, Sakura-san," he said, indolent.

"Do I?"

* * *

**AN: **I got some complaints about this one over on Tumblr actually... ? but I hope you've enjoyed it!


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